A defining work of moral philosophy, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals has been influential to an extent far beyond what its modest length (roughly 75 pages) might suggest. It is also a famously difficult work, concerned with propounding universal principles rather than answering practical questions. As even professional philosophers will admit, first-time readers are not alone in finding some of its arguments perplexing.

Offering an introduction that is accessible to students and relevant to specialized scholars, Dieter Schönecker and Allen Wood make luminously clear the ways the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals forms the basis of our modern moral outlook: that all human beings have equal dignity as ends in themselves; that every rational being is a self-governing agent whose morality freely derives from his or her own will; and that all rational beings constitute an ideal community, bound only by the moral laws they have agreed upon. Schönecker and Wood explain key Kantian concepts of duty, the good will, and moral worth, as well as the propositions Kant uses to derive his conception of the moral law. How the law relates to freedom, and the significance of the free will within Kant’s overall philosophy are rigorously interrogated. Where differing interpretations of Kant’s claims are possible, the authors provide alternative options, giving arguments for each. This critical introduction will help readers of the Groundwork gain an informed understanding of Kant’s challenging but central philosophical work.

In Reasonable Hope considers three foundational responses to this quest for some understanding of the existence, meaning, and value of everything. Other approaches can be considered as combinations or variations of these. Firstly, there is the approach which claims that it is our humanity, exercising its unique intelligent subjectivity, that is the source and measure of all possible meaning and value. Nothing can be thought of as existing, meaningful or of value apart from a thinking human subject. This is a broadly Humanist approach to ultimate meaning. Man is the measure of all things. Secondly, there is the approach of Scientism. This claims that an ultimate understanding of the world and ourselves must be sought, less anthropocentrically, in terms of the findings of basic empirical sciences such as physics and chemistry. We live in a world ever-increasingly dominated by the autonomous system of science and technology. Such Scientism implies an explicitly reductionist and materialist conception of the meaning and value of everything. Thirdly, there is the approach of Theism which maintains that, in the final analysis, the meaning and value of everything, insofar as this can be known, is to be explained in terms of a transcendent infinitely perfect personal being we call God. The first two approaches are carefully considered. However, it is the third to which most attention is devoted. Consideration is given to the traditional impersonal metaphysical approach to questions about the existence and nature of God. The alternative approaches of linguistic philosophy and phenomenology, which reject such metaphysical speculation are also discussed. These various approaches are judged to be complementary rather than strict alternatives. In the latter half of the book is devoted to a more personal and self-involving discussion of the relevance of an affirmation of the existence of God. It explores the implications of a rational commitment to live one's life in accordance with the requirements of values which transcend explanation in purely physical terms, such as truth, goodness, beauty, and especially love. It provides a personal and existential development of the rational hope that such values are ultimately more objectively real and dependable than the eventual universal material chaos predicted by empirical science. It argues that the existence of God as the infinite expression and source of these values is the necessary and sufficient condition of this rational hope in their enduring significance. Finally, there is an account of how the Christian Revelation illuminates and transforms our rational hope in the enduring significance of love of God and neighbor.

Over the past twenty-five years, Bruno Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated—a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to “capital-S Science” as a higher authority. Such modes of extension—or modes of existence, Latour argues here—account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.

“Magnificent…An Inquiry into Modes of Existence shows that [Latour] has lost none of his astonishing fertility as a thinker, or his skill and wit as a writer…Latour’s main message—that rationality is ‘woven from more than one thread’—is intended not just for the academic seminar, but for the public square—and the public square today is global as never before.”
—Jonathan Rée, Times Literary Supplement

“Latour’s work makes the world—sorry, worlds—interesting again.”
—Stephen Muecke, Los Angeles Review of Books

Intersubjective Existence, as the author notes, aims, first, to develop a wisdom about human life that takes the form of a theory of selfhood and, second, to reflect on what is called for in the ethical practice of human existence. Secondly, the ethical implications of this theory of selfhood are explored, specifically looking at conscience, prudential reasoning, justice, friendship, the law, temperance, courage, and concluding with a brief treatment of religion. Olivia Blanchette charts the path of his inquiry through an analysis of reflective self-consciousness in selves communing with one another. They are constituted in their substance as a union of body and soul, with intelligence and free will that give rise to cultures in communion with other selves. These cultures are over and above what is given to each self in sense consciousness and in sense appetites and which each one contends with in the exercise of selfhood and the rights that go with that in keeping with justice. Concern for right reasoning and justice leads to an analysis of temperance and courage. The chief arguments take the form of phenomenological reflections on the building blocks of the perennial philosophy. Blanchette recasts Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics from the perspective of a phenomenology of the mutual recognition of agents and the historical consciousness to which it gives rise.

This book explores the contested place of metaphysics since Kant and Hegel, arguing for a renewed metaphysical thinking about the intimate strangeness of being.

“The Analytic Thomist,” Rob Koons, delivered the 2021 Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas. Here he engages the possibility of a bridge between philosophy and metaphysics proper. Koons boldly lays out his position: without Aristotelian metaphysics, there is no Aristotelian philosophy of nature, and there is no philosophy of nature in Aristotle without acknowledging his natural science. His lecture thus challenges Thomists and their respective approaches to hylomorphism and their all too frequent quickness to discard it. (Koons lays down the gauntlet. if one denies hylomorphism there can be no transubstantiation!) 
       A bonus addition to this volume in the Dallas lecture series is Koon's “Aristotle, god and the Quantum.”