The development of moral sense theory and Kant's ethics

After more than 200 years since its initial presentation, Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) moral philosophy continues to attract a significant amount of attention. Especially over the course of the last fifty years, the amount of scholarship devoted to nearly every aspect of Kant's moral philosophy has steadily increased. Despite this large and growing body of scholarship, however, comparatively little attention has been paid to two topics: 1. the way in which Kant's moral philosophy was influenced by his contemporaries and predecessors, and 2. the development of Kant's moral philosophy over the course of his philosophical career. The following dissertation aims to help remedy this situation by exploring one of the most important influences on the development of Kant's moral philosophy: British moral sense theory, as reflected in the thought of Anthony Ashley Cooper (a.k.a. Shaftesbury) (16711713) and Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). The works of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and many other eighteenth century British philosophers were widely discussed in Germany in second half of the eighteenth century, and this was made possible in large part by the, in some cases rapid, translation of their texts into German. With respect to Shaftesbury's works, for example, his Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (originally published in 1710) was first translated into German in 1738 by Georg Venzki and seems to have been so popular that it received a second, anonymous translation in 1746. Shaftesbury's two most important works on moral philosophy, The Moralists (1709) and An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (1699), were both translated by Johann Joachim Spalding in 1745 and 1747 respectively.