At the beginning of The Invention of Autonomy, J.B. Schneewind modestly explains that he began work on the book "because there were many aspects of Kant's moral philosophy I could not understand," and he therefore sought to understand Kant's remarkable contribution to moral theory by considering it in its historical context. By the time one finishes reading the book, over 500 pages later, it's reasonable to question if there's anything about modern moral philosophy that Schneewind fails to understand.

The Invention of Autonomy is divided into four main parts. In the first part, Schneewind discusses the natural-law theory of morality, as classically expounded by St. Thomas Aquinas, and traces its rise and fall by considering the works of Luther, Calvin, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Charron, Suarez, Grotius, Hobbes, Cumberland, Pufendorf, Locke, and Thomasius. The second part deals with perfectionist approaches, as exemplified by Herbert of Cherbury, Descartes, the Cambridge Platonists, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz. The third part looks at moral philosophers who, by and large, are inclined to regard morality as independent of God's ongoing cooperation. Most of the canonical British moralists, from Shaftesbury, Clarke, and Mandeville to Hume, Reid, and Bentham, are included. Finally, in the fourth part, Schneewind examines anticipations of Kant's invention (or, perhaps, discovery) of autonomy in the works of Wolff, Crusius, the French philosophes, and Rousseau. He then skillfully relates Kant's moral thought to the rich tradition preceding it.

J.B.施尼溫德係美國著名學者，也是世界範圍內的西方倫理學史及康德倫理哲學的權威專傢之一。曾執教於芝加哥、耶魯、斯坦福等名校。後執教於約翰•霍普金斯大學直至退休。施尼溫德教授曾任美國哲學學會東部分會的主席，是美國藝術與科學學院院士。

譯者：張誌平畢業於復旦大學哲學係，現執教於上海師範大學。