The Theory of Obligation in Wolff, Baumgarten, and the Early Kant

Abstract

Taking the general concept of 'obligation' as a guiding theme, this chapter identifies certain unconsidered features of the development of German Enlightenment thought that were taken up and further developed in the context of Immanuel Kant's new approach to moral philosophy. Drawing upon the earlier research of Mariano Campos, the chapter reconstructs the developmental history of Wolff's theory of obligation. In his first programmatic work, the Philosophia practica universalis, mathematica methodo conscripta of 1703, Christian Wolff defends a positivistic concept of law and obligation that owes much to the thought of Samuel Pufendorf. Wolff was fundamentally shaken by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's objections to the position defended in his first published work, as the thorough self-criticism that Wolff presented in the Ratio praelectorum of 1718 clearly reveals. In his understanding of obligation, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten introduces new emphases of his own that reinforce the authentically compelling character of practical prescriptions.

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