Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin, the Russian historian and philosopher, was educated at Moscow University, where he was later professor of history. Kavelin also taught at St. Petersburg University and was for a time tutor to the royal family. In addition to numerous historical works, he wrote essays in psychology, sociology, and ethics. During the 1870s he carried on an active polemic with Vladimir Solov'ëv, defending a positivist (or "semipositivist") position against Solov'ëv's criticisms. In politics Kavelin was a moderate liberal; in religion he remained devoutly Russian Orthodox.

Kavelin's main work in ethical theory, Zadachi etiki (Tasks [or problems] of ethics), appeared in 1844. In it he criticized the then fashionable one-sided "objectivism," which, he charged, blurred the distinction between inner intention and outward behavior, leading to the conclusion that intentions may be "unlawful" or volitions "criminal." From the neo-Kantian viewpoint that Kavelin...