Von der coactio hypothetica zum kategorischen Imperativ: Was Kants Autonomie-Lehre Achenwalls Naturrecht von 1755 verdankt

Abstract

In the first edition of his textbook on Natural Law (1750), Achenwall advocates a theory of obligation which reveals that he was a Wolffian before he came from Halle via Marburg to Göttingen in 1748: Obligation is essentially the connection of a free action with a motive. With the third edition of the textbook (1755), Achenwall changes in terms of obligation theory to the camp of the Pufendorfians, who understood obligation essentially as a relationship between two wills, that of the obliged and that of a superior obligor (whereby in natural law God is this obligor). Achenwall herewith explicitly joins the Wolff-criticism of his Göttingen predecessor Gottlieb Samuel Treuer, who in turn followed Jean Barbeyrac. It is this ‘Pufendorfian’ Achenwall - but not the ‘Wolf­fian’ of 1750 - according to whose textbook Kant gives his lectures since the 1770s. However, in 1785, in the Groundwork, Kant replaces the divine will by the pure legis­lative will of the obligated person himself: Autonomy replaces Theonomy - and Wolff’s idiosyncratic concept of ‘obligation as motivation’ finally drops out of the game again.