Nature and freedom in Kant's ethics: The historical development of Kant's moral and political philosophy, 1775--1798

This dissertation provides one of the first systematic treatments of the overall historical development of Kant's moral and political philosophy in the 'critical period'. My approach is both historical and doctrinal.;From a historical perspective, I offer a novel account of the main historical motivations behind each of Kant's three major ethical writings: the Groundwork, Critique of Practical Reason, and Metaphysics of Morals. I demonstrate, first, that the unique role played by the 1785 Groundwork is to serve as a "practical version" of Kant's 1783 Prolegomena; second, that the 1788 Second Critique was written in large part as Kant's definitive answer to the so-called "Pantheism Controversy"; and third, that the final form of the 1797 Metaphysics of Morals was deeply influenced by Kant's changing attitudes around this time about a 'metaphysics of nature', particularly his new attitudes towards the earlier 1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. From a doctrinal perspective, I analyze many overlooked doctrinal changes in Kant's views related to three topics: the moral law, the moral agent, and the ends of moral willing. I argue that Kant significantly revises major doctrinal views about the purity of the moral law, moral virtue and character, human nature, autonomy and freedom, and the concrete material effects of our moral activity.;If my analysis is correct, this forces us to fundamentally rethink the overall character of Kant's critical system. Not only does Kant's practical philosophy display as numerous and significant of doctrinal changes as his theoretical philosophy. In addition, the overall trajectory of Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy displays a much-overlooked parallel development, mutually influencing and resembling one another in ways which have not yet been fully explored or often even recognized. By defending a systematically unified account of Kant's critical system as a whole, I hope to thereby shed wholly new light on what Kant even intended by his main ethical project of a 'metaphysics of morals' itself.