“At tu nomen inane es”. Baumgarten and Kant on the Legislator: Moral Theology and Justice

Studies, although not abundant, on the influence of Baumgarten’s practical philosophy on Kantian moral philosophy have clearly demonstrated two points so far. The first is Baumgarten’s undeniable “positive” influence on the foundation of Kantian morality, concerning both terminology and some central topics, like obligation. The second deals with those features on which Baumgarten’s influence upon Kant can be defined as per oppositionem (Bacin 2015). Among these topics, paradigmatic is Kant’s rejection of the role that Baumgarten, quite in contrast with the Wolffian school, assigns to God in the foundation of morality. The concept of “Legislator” keeps these trends together. Indeed, in the section of the Initia devoted to the obligantia, Baumgarten identifies the Legislator with God as the author of natural laws, as well as of the obligations linked to them. Recent studies have pointed out the relevance of Kant’s distinction between the “author of the law,” who cannot be God, and God as the “lawgiver”—namely, the “author of the obligation”—for the autonomy of Kant’s morality (Kain 2004; Reath 2006; Irwin 2004, 2009). Although excluded from the foundation of morality and with many nuances, the recourse to moral theology, at least as a strengthening or postulate of morality, remains however constant in Kant’s moral philosophy. This is due to the structural need for morality to be accompanied by justice. In fact, this need is not always explicitly thematized, but it is nonetheless pervasive in the development of Kant’s practical philosophy (Brandt 1993). Hence, by looking in particular at the final settlement of the Metaphysics of Morals, the present contribution aims to reconstruct and evaluate the weight of the recourse to the figure of a supreme lawgiver as a heuristic means for making moral legislation effective in both the ethical and legal dimensions.