Manfred Baum

At the centre of discussion lies the reception of Plato’s philosophy, particularly his theory of Ideas, in Kant’s moral philosophy, his ethics and his doctrine of right. Kant saw himself as a follower of Platonism insofar as its anti-empiri­cist principles of human conduct are concerned, although his own version of practical rationalism differs considerably from Plato’s. This is also true of Kant’s conception of freedom and of human rights. The greatest impact on Kant’s moral philosophy is due to the doctrine of the two worlds, the mundus sensibilis and the mundus intelligibilis, which did not originate in Plato himself, but in the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria. Kant reinterpreted this doctrine by taking the intelligible world as a moral world consisting of free rational agents who ought to transform the empirical world of human society and history according to the norms and standards of moral laws. This was meant to be a programme for a moral reform of the human world, both with regard to individual moral­ity and to the cosmopolitical task of the establishment of an international order of legal institutions. Kant’s practical Platonism insists on the creation of a moral world order through human actions that take their lead from pure practical reason.

Der Beitrag handelt vom Verhältnis der Kantischen Ethik zur empirischen Psychologie seiner Zeit. Einerseits spricht Kant der empirischen Psychologie jede Bedeutung für seine reine praktische Philosophie ab. Andererseits bewegt sich seine Ethik wie selbstverständlich im Bezugsrahmen der Baumgartenschen Dreivermögenslehre. In ersten Teil wird Wolffs und Baumgartens psychologisches Fundament ihrer Moralphilosophie erörtert, im zweiten wird der Einfluß Hutchesons auf Kants praktische Anthropologie beleuchtet, im dritten und vierten Teil werden Kants Lehre von Wille und Willkür in ihrem Verhältnis zu Gefühl und Begehren untersucht und die Gründe für die Irrelanz der Psychologie für die apriorische Bestimmung des Wollens durch das Sittengesetz angegeben.The article deals with the relationship between Kantian ethics and empirical psychology at that time. On the one hand, Kant rejects the relevance of empirical psychology for his pure practical philosophy. On the other, Kant's ethics most obviously fall into place within Baumgarten's theory of three capacities. The first part of the article discusses Wolff's and Baumgarten's psychological foundations for their moral philosophy. The second part explains Hutcheson's influence on Kant's practical anthropology. The third and fourth parts examine Kant's theory of will and choice in their relation to feeling and desire. The reasons why psychology is irrelevant for the a priori determination of the will by the moral law will then be indicated.

The paper first explains why Kant, contrary to the wish of his reviewer H. A. Pistorius, cannot introduce his ethics with a definition „of that which is good“. A detailed interpretation of the chapter „On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason“ follows,which deals above all with the „paradox of method in a critique of practical reason“. Here again the focus is on Kant’s claim that the justification of his new method at the same time explains „the basis that occasions all the strayings of philosopherswith regard to the supreme principle of morality“. It is in this context, that Kant’s remarks on the „categories of freedom“ as concepts that ground practical cognition a priori of actions belong. The analysis of these categories and their table conclude the paper.

Through a structural analysis of the concept of labor in the Paris Manuscripts and the Grundrisse, and in response to critics of Marx such as Hannah Arendt and Alfred Schmidt, the author argues that freedom in Marx is not simply freedom from labor or free time. In accordance with the essence of the human being as a working organism, the goal of the socialist revolution is also free labor. Finally, the transformation of the human being brought about by the development of laboras poesis in turn entails the transformation of labor necessarily performed because of human dependence on nature.