John Walsh

In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant denies K. L. Reinhold’s definition of free will as the capacity to choose for or against the moral law. Kant notoriously calls the possibility of deviating from the moral law an incapacity, leading commentators to attribute to Kant the view that immoral action is not free. I argue that this claim instead pertains to the proper definition of free will. This reading elucidates the connection between Kant’s commitment to free immoral action and his restriction of the concept of free will to pure reason’s ability to be practical independently of sensible necessitation.

Kant famously carves out space for transcendental freedom by dint of the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. In doing so, he denies establishing the actuality of freedom, as this would transcend the legitimate use of theoretical reason. Strikingly, he also denies proving the possibility of freedom (KrV, A 558/B 586). There is widespread agreement that here Kant denies having demonstrated the real possibility of freedom. However, scholars are divided on the kind of possibility that does pertain to it. This paper explores the modal status of transcendental freedom from the standpoint of theoretical reason. I argue that Kant establishes both the logical possibility of freedom and a more robust status – what I call real non-impossibility. Short of proving transcendental freedom to be really possible, he shows that its real impossibility cannot be demonstrated, thereby leaving room for a deduction of its reality on practical grounds.

In the 1770s’ lectures on ethics, Kant distinguishes between two principles of obligation: the principle of adjudication and the principle of execution. The former is the normative standard of moral evaluation, while the latter denotes the incentive for performing an obligatory action. This distinction is significant in that it anticipates Kant’s mature position of combining these two principles, i.e. the moral law later becomes the supreme principle of moral judgment and (via respect) is itself the incentive to moral action. I explicate Kant’s distinction in view of the moral thought of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Christian Wolff. I challenge the dominant views which interpret Kant’s distinction in connection with Hutcheson and Smith, and argue that it is best understood in relation to Wolff’s conception of obligation. While Hutcheson’s distinction between exciting and justifying reasons is broadly similar to Kant’s distinction, Hutcheson’s account does not center on the concept of obligation. Furthermore, I argue that Smith’s distinction between the character of virtue and the faculty of the mind by which it is recommended to us does not concern the normative and motivational moments of moral agency, but rather the meta-ethical question of the nature of virtue and the faculty that conditions its appraisal. Finally, I show that Wolff’s conception of obligation involves normative and motivational aspects conceptually similar to Kant’s distinction between the two principles of obligation.

K.L. Reinhold’s late philosophy is characterized by a preoccupation with the notion of truth. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ontological and semantic dimensions of Reinhold’s late conception of truth. I argue that discursive representation uniquely manifests truth in itself by making explicit its underlying ontological structure. I show further that, for Reinhold, language acquisition vis-à-vis an inferential grasp of indexicals opens up the horizon of meaning for discursive thinkers. I conclude by highlighting how the relation between meaning and being in Reinhold’s late account of truth takes on religious overtones: the manifestation of truth in itself in human discursive thought makes man the proper image of God.

K.L. Reinhold is generally taken to assert immediate knowledge of free will. I argue for a novel reading of Reinhold’s epistemology of freedom, based on the methodological distinction between common human understanding and philosophizing reason. For Reinhold, the philosophical justification of the proposition that we possess free will is based on consciousness of the moral law, and therefore is not a baldly asserted fact. This philosophical justification involves tracing the «facts» of moral self-consciousness to their transcendental grounds. I conclude by showing that Reinhold’s position is characteristic of the late German Enlightenment.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate Ulrich’s impact on Kant and the immediate reception of Kant’s account of freedom. I argue that Ulrich’s critical inquiry into grounding and free will influenced Kant’s treatment of the subjective ground of the exercise of freedom in the Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. I analyze Ulrich’s critique in relation to Kant’s understanding of freedom as a kind of causality, exploring the connection between grounding and the subjective ground of freedom’s exercise. I argue further that Ulrich shaped the subsequent debate on the scope of free will and the possibility of free immoral action by inciting the 1790s debate on moral imputation.

In the German Ethics, Christian Wolff presents a novel account of obligation based on motivation. Recent commentators refer to his account of obligation as “psychological.” Furthermore, this psychologistic interpretation of Wolff’s view is assumed to prevail among his contemporaries and followers, shaping the development of ethics in eighteenth-century Germany. In this chapter, I offer an alternative to the standard psychologistic reading. I argue that Wolff’s concept of obligation is best understood as part of a theory of ideal practical rationality. On this view, obligation consists in the normative relation between an action’s objective representable features and an ideal rational agent, and thereby expresses the motivating character of an action’s goodness for rational beings. So understood, obligation is subjunctively robust: it indicates how rational agents would be motivated under ideal cognizing conditions.

K.L. Reinhold defende uma teoria da vontade livre como a capacidade de escolher por e contra a lei moral. A teoria de Reinhold tem sido frequentemente acusada de ser psicologista devido a seu suposto apelo a fatos empíricos da consciência. Este artigo argumenta que, em vez de meramente considerar a vontade livre como um fato da consciência, Reinhold oferece um argumento em favor da vontade livre como uma condição necessária para a responsabilidade moral. Isso joga nova luz ao desenvolvimento do conceito de vontade no despertar da filosofia prática de Kant.

A core feature of Kant’s Critical account of moral motivation is that pure reason can be practical by itself. I argue that Kant developed this view in the 1770s concerning the principium diiudicationis and principium executionis. These principles indicate the normative and performative aspects of moral motivation. I demonstrate that cognition of the normative principle effects the moral incentive. So, the hallmark of Kant’s Critical account of motivation was contained in his pre-Critical view. This interpretation resolves a controversy about Kant’s apparent eudaimonism in the first Critique and shows that he developed his account of moral autonomy in the 1770s.

This paper investigates the relationship between Reinhold’s account of free will and Kant’s account in the Religion. This relationship is important because Reinhold considered Kant’s treatment of free will in the Religion to confirm his own view that freedom consists in the capacity to choose for or against the moral law. I argue that despite their shared commitment to freedom as a necessary condition for imputation, these two thinkers have disparate conceptions of the ground for the exercise of free will. This difference indicates difficulties in their respective accounts.

K.L. Reinhold advocates a theory of free will as the capacity to choose for or against the moral law. Reinhold’s theory has often been accused of being psychologistic due to its alleged appeal to empirical facts of consciousness. This paper argues that instead of merely positing free will as a fact of consciousness, Reinhold provides an argument for free will as a necessary condition for moral responsibility. This sheds new light on the development of the concept of will in the wake of Kant’s practical philosophy.

This book offers translations of early critical reactions to Kant’s account of free will. Spanning the years 1784–1800, the translations make available, for the first time in English, works by little-known thinkers including Pistorius, Ulrich, Heydenreich, Creuzer and others, as well as familiar figures including Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling. Together they are a testimony to the intense debates surrounding the reception of Kant’s account of free will in the 1780s and 1790s, and throw into relief the controversies concerning the coherence of Kant’s concept of transcendental freedom, the possibility of reconciling freedom with determinism, the relation between free will and moral imputation, and other arguments central to Kant’s view. The volume also includes a helpful introduction, a glossary of key terms and biographical details of the critics, and will provide a valuable foundation for further research on free will in post-Kantian philosophy.

C.C.E. Schmid’s doctrine of intelligible fatalism was immensely influential in the immediate reception of Kant’s philosophy. Existing treatments of this doctrine, largely neglected by modern scholarship, echo uncharitable interpretations espoused by Schmid’s contemporaries. I demonstrate that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is more coherent and philosophically robust than hitherto recognized. I argue for a novel interpretation of Schmid’s account of rational agency, showing that intelligible fatalism is compatible with his conceptions of freedom, obligation, and imputation. Specifically, I argue that the role of consciousness in this account carves out conceptual space for a distinction between the theoretical and the practical that is sufficient to render intelligible fatalism consistent with these conceptions.

This is a collection of sixteen essays by a diverse group of international scholars that offers a wide-ranging and contemporary perspective on the major aspects of Christian Wolff’s ethics. The volume focuses on Wolff’s German Ethics, arguably his most important and influential text on moral philosophy, but many of the chapters also consider the development of the basic tenets of Wolff’s moral theory in his later Latin writings. The contributions cover a range of topics, including the systematic structure of the text itself and the relation between Wolff’s ethics and the preceding natural law tradition. Many chapters pay special attention to the core concepts of Wolff’s moral philosophy, such as obligation, perfection, the highest good, and happiness. Other notable topics include Wolff’s conception of moral judgment and moral education, as well as the role of psychology and anthropology in his ethical thought. The volume also contains discussion of the influence of Wolff’s ethics on subsequent figures such as C.A. Crusius, G.F. Meier, and Kant. As a whole, the volume seeks to establish the importance of Wolff’s German Ethics within the history of ethics as well as inspire others to engage with his thought.