We can gratefully acknowledge that Herman has succeeded in exploring some rich new territory with unusual patience, originality, and insight. In a domain, like Kantian ethics, that many would suppose has already been fully mapped and assessed, this is a remarkable and welcome accomplishment.
   --Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Journal of Philosophy

This publication of Barbara Herman's essays marks a major advance in the now flourishing field of Kantian ethics...Their greatest achievement is to show how Kant's ethics is based on a compelling moral psychology and a sophisticated theory of value.
   --Elizabeth Anderson, Philosophical Review

Herman succeeds in presenting an interpretation of Kant's ethics that shows it to be a powerful alternative to the empiricist utilitarian, neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, and the post-modernist individualist or existentialist ethical theories which have enjoyed such prominence in recent years...What [Herman] has given us is a deeply compelling picture of both the structure and power of Kant's regulative ideal of moral deliberation, and that is much to be grateful for indeed.
   --Paul Guyer, Ethics

Herman succeeds admirably...in bringing Kantian ideas to life: not only by providing an engaging and plausible internal reconstruction of those ideas, but also by making them relevant to our present practical concerns. On the one hand, the reader encounters a careful treatment of the fundamental questions at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy, such as the conditions of free (autonomous) agency, the nature of the will, the question of the source of “obligatory ends” or duties, the problem of moral motivation, and the relation between our rational and our animal nature. On the other hand, Herman addresses pressing questions about ethical and social pluralism, moral change, education, the legitimacy of social and political institutions, pornography and censorship, affirmative action, gender equity, child abuse, and friendship, to name only a few. She connects these two endeavors not so much by “applying” moral concepts to practical cases, but rather by making the latter central to the very project of elaborating the concepts in the first place.
   --Felix Koch, Metapsychology Online

Barbara Herman is Griffin Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Read More by Barbara Herman:

• Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
• Moral Literacy