The Mary Gregor Lecture Series 

As is well known to any student of Kant, Mary Gregor’s translations of the Groundwork, Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and several other works, have exerted tremendous influence on contemporary scholarship and constitute a substantial contribution to The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Mary Gregor also was the author of important interpretive work on Kant’s practical philosophy: her 1963 Laws of Freedom, for instance, remains one of the best monographs on Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals.

In recognition of the importance of her work, NAKS has sponsored a lecture series at the APA Central Division Meeting for the past twelve years. The series originated thanks to an anonymous donation after Gregor’s death in 1994. Pauline Kleingeld, NAKS president at the time, decided to name a lecture series after Mary Gregor and to use the donated funds for this purpose.

The main goal of the series is to invite distinguished Kant scholars from outside of North America to speak on relevant issues in Kant’s practical philosophy. Rolf-Peter Hostmann was the first lecturer in 2002. Since then, NAKS has featured:

2020 Dieter Schoenecker, “Do Criminals Forfeit Their Dignity? On a Notorious Passage in Kant’s Rechtslehre (RL: 329 f.)”

2018 Vadim Chaly, “The Russian Kant”

(commentator: Susan Meld Shell)

2016 Claudio LaRoccha, “Kant and the Problem of Conscience"

(commentator: Jens Timmerman)

2014 Bernd Ludwig, “Why Groundwork III Failed: The Dogmatism of Kant's Pre-1787 Theory of Freedom"

(commentator: Arthur Ripstein) 

2012 Heiner Klemme, “Kant on Moral Self-Determination and Self-Knowledge"

2011 Jens Timmermann,  “Kantian Dilemmas? Moral Conflict in Kant's Ethical Theory"

(commentator: Frederick Rauscher) 

2002-2010 (in that order) Rolf-Peter Hostmann, Howard Williams, Manfred Kuehn, Jürgen Stolzenberg, Marcus Willaschek, 

Zeljko Loparic, Katrin Flikschuh, Graham Bird, Georg Mohr

For various budget reasons, and in order to better support our projects and serve our members, in 2014 the NAKS Executive Committee decided to make the Gregor Lecture a biennial event, instead of an annual event as we have done so far. The 2014 Gregor Lecture is the first in that biennial cycle.