A thorough study of why Kant developed the concept of autonomy, one of his central legacies for contemporary moral thought.

Introduction Stefano Bacin and Oliver Sensen; 1. How is moral obligation possible? Kant's 'principle of autonomy' in historical context Heiner F. Klemme; 2. Anticipations of autonomy: freedom, obligation, and the concept of a world in Kant's writings of the Mid-1750s to Mid-1760s Susan Meld Shell; 3. Autonomy and moral rationalism: Kant's criticisms of 'rationalist' moral principles (1762-85) Stefano Bacin; 4. Autonomy and moral empiricism: Kant's criticism of sentimentalist moral principles (1762-85) Georg Mohr; 5. Elements of autonomy in Kant's Lectures on Ethics (1770-80) Oliver Sensen; 6. Emerging autonomy: dealing with the inadequacies of the 'canon' of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Jens Timmermann; 7. Autonomy and the legislation of laws in the Prolegomena (1783) Eric Watkins; 8. How can freedom be a law to itself? The concept of autonomy in the 'introduction' to the Naturrecht Feyerabend lecture notes (1784) Marcus Willaschek; 9. Moral autonomy as political analogy: self-legislation in Kant's Groundwork and the Feyerabend lectures on natural law (1784) Pauline Kleingeld; 10. What emerged: autonomy and heteronomy in the Groundwork and second Critique Andrews Reath; 11. Kant's threefold autonomy after the Groundwork: reason's own law-giving as our own cosmopolitan law-giving Pierre Keller.