Rousseau and the architectonics of the second section of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Abstract

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is a preparatory work for the Critique of Practical Reason, and its declared objective is the search for and determination of the supreme principle of morality. Following a procedure distinct from that used in the first critique, defined as synthetic, Kant proposes to analyze how ordinary human understanding correctly deals with certain notions of moral scope, despite not conceiving them in abstracto. Arguing that it is impossible to be guided by simple examples if we want to find the principle to which all morally oriented wills must submit, Kant locates in reason and the concepts that have their source in it the possibility of establishing rules that unconditionally unify the possibility of our actions. Only through reason would we be able to represent laws that produce in us the feeling of an infallible obligation, canceling, in the condition of rational beings, all sensible or natural motivation for our choices. Our objective is to show that the basic elements with which Kant elaborates and structures his argument, starting with the idea of rational beings, are already present in Rousseau’s On the Social Contract. Although we do not have space in this article for a detailed comparative analysis, we believe it is possible to indicate some links between the, so to speak, architectonic conception of the Kantian Groundwork, especially in its Second Section, and the elaboration of the concepts that support the thesis of the sovereign power of the general will, an unavoidable power when the hypothesis of the social pact is accepted.