ABSTRACT
In transforming the field of moral philosophy, Immanuel Kant introduced ideas and themes that inspired a library of seminal works of German social science. Kant also introduced a separation between domains defined by two radically different perspectives, the world of nature and the world of freedom. For Kant, the world of freedom, not that of natural phenomena, constitutes the ground of morality. Kant rejected the notion that morality could be based on nature for a number of reasons. He strove to exploit the resources of modern rationality to secure a foundation for moral judgments that could overcome partisan bickering and the temptations of evil. Kant's essay arguably served as a template against which G. W. F. Hegel came to stake out his own historicizing philosophy. During the years when Kant was laying the foundations for an uncompromisingly anti-naturalistic ethics of practical reason, Johann Gottfried von Herder was busy making a revolution of a different stamp.
