Rousseau and Kant on Freedom

Abstract

Kantian moral philosophy can be understood as a continuation and improvement of Rousseau’s contractualism. The continuation entails the distinction between two concepts of freedom (freedom from instinct and normative freedom). By using this distinction, Kant manages to define withmore precision the object of moral philosophy and to clarify the purpose behind his reasoning. This is the improvement. To validate the central argument of this thesis, the purpose of the justification and the methodological means of Rousseau’s Second Discourse are reconstructed in the first section. The purpose of the justification consists in supporting the normative basis (as normative freedom) for the Contrat Social. The methodological means consists in a hypothetical developmental history of the human being. Rousseau shows only that this history can only be narrated when the freedom of the human being (as freedom from instinct) is presupposed. Thus the purpose of justification is missed. In the second section I show that Kant uses these two concepts of freedom to determine the object of moral philosophy. Kant distinguishes in his writings between human choice (Willkür) and the pure will (Wille). In the light of this distinction, practical norms must be understood in the form of imperatives.Additionally, this distinction makes it possible to point out the validity of practical norms. These must be unconditional and therefore categorical imperatives. On this basis, the actual goal justifying moral philosophy can be stated as follows: How are categorical imperatives to be justified?