This volume contains the thirteen essays I published on Kantian ethics between 1983 and 1993. Part One consists of seven essays which are devoted primarily to the exposition, interpretation, and, in some cases, reconstruction, of Kant's moral philosophy itself. Part Two consists of six essays in which I compare and contrast Kantian ideas and approaches with those of other important moral philosophers, both in the tradition and on the contemporary scene.

The first essay in Part One provides a general survey of Kant's ideas about morality, the political state, and the ethical basis of religious faith, situating those ideas within Kant's general project of providing a critique of reason and in the historical context from which that project arose. The remaining six essays together constitute a short commentary on Kant's moral philosophy, following the order in which Kant himself presents his ideas in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, but bringing in material from his other ethical works.

Two themes dominate the interpretation of Kant which I offer in these essays. The first is the theory of value that I associate with Kant's Formula of Humanity. Kant differs from realists and empiricists not merely in the objects to which he assigns value, or in the way he categorizes different kinds of value, but in the story he tells about why there is such a thing as value in the world.