Moral Necessity, Possibility, and Impossibility from Leibniz to Kant

Abstract

In all three of his major works on moral philosophy, Kant conceives of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility in modal terms, namely in terms of moral necessity, moral possibility, and moral impossibility respectively. This terminology is not Kant’s own, however, but has a rather long history stretching back to a group of Spanish Jesuit theologians in the early seventeenth century, and it was used in two contexts: in the context of divine and human action to explain how volition can be both metaphysically and physically free and yet morally necessary, and in a deontic context to refer to moral obligation, permissibility, and impermissibility. In this paper, my first and primary aim is to sketch the way in which four of Kant’s most important German predecessors, namely Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Christian August Crusius, used the language of moral necessity, possibility, and impossibility in both the context of action and obligation. My second, more limited aim is to suggest that Kant’s use of these terms can be clarified by taking this background into consideration.