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In a sense the ambition of the neo-Kantian Marxists at the turn of the century to marry Kantian ethics with Marxian social theory was realized sixty years later in the work of one of the most original, noteworthy, and unorthodox moral philosophers to have participated in the recent rebirth of interest in ethical theory in the Soviet Union, Ja. A. Mil"ner-Irinin. In a monograph entitled Ethics, or the Principles of True Humanity Mil"ner-Irinin developed a denotological ethics inspired in a number of respects by Kant's practical philosophy, but also influenced by Hegel, and of course Marx.¹ His writings on ethics also contain some treatments of metaphysical issues which reflect his interest in Spinoza.² In Mil"ner-Irinin's own view his Ethics constitutes the first truly substantial and successful attempt to develop Kantian ethics in the light of the materialist conception of history, to construct a deontological ethical theory which accomodates the insights of Marx. He describes his own ethical system as a deontological one, or an "ethics of principle", which he distinguishes from "normative ethics' or an "ethic of negatives".³

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9876-6_8

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