29

Rationalism and Perfectionism

s t e f a n o ba c i n

Rationalist accounts of morality played a central role in eighteenth-century

moral philosophy. This applies especially to Britain and Germany, where new
views, like Hutcheson’s, Hume’s or Kant’s, entered the stage in reaction to the
traditional rationalist positions. Although the debates in the English- and
German-speaking areas developed largely independently, in both of them the
rationalist views shared some fundamental theses. Both British and German
rationalists of the eighteenth century regarded reason as the main moral
faculty, insofar as reason is the cognitive power allowing human beings to
discover within reality the sources of moral demands. Both British and German
rationalists possessed a realistic account of the normative force of moral
demands, as they held that its ultimate grounds lie in reality. All these thinkers
rejected the attempt to explain moral obligation through positive commands,
issued by a divine or human legislator. In spite of these shared points, there are,
however, some important differences between British and German rational-
isms in the eighteenth century, which will be highlighted in the following.

MORAL RATIONALISM AND MORAL REALISM : SAMUEL

CLARKE , WOLLASTON , BALGUY

Between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the rejection of Hobbes’s view and of law-centred voluntarist
accounts of morals in general led to a new wave of realist accounts of
morality. Along with Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit
(1699), Samuel Clarke’s second set of Boyle lectures (A Discourse Concerning
the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of
the Christian Revelation, 1706) is the most important attempt of this kind at the

Please see the list of abbreviations at the end of the chapter. I have modernized the
spelling of the sources.

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outset of the eighteenth century. Clarke (1675–1726) aimed at an explanation

of moral obligation that both accounts for its necessity and secures its accord
with, on the one hand, Christian religion and, on the other, the new scientific
image of the world. The most comprehensive statement of his views on
morality provided in the Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of
Natural Religion is closely connected with the discussion of the main issues of
philosophical theology presented in the first set of lectures (published as A
Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, 1705).
Clarke shares with Cudworth and Shaftesbury a broadly Platonic background.
However, the position that he develops is different from theirs in important
respects. Unlike Shaftesbury, Clarke does not think that moral distinctions are
harmonious proportions in actions and character traits perceived through affec-
tions. Clarke does hold that moral distinctions are rooted in the nature of things,
but conceives of them as relations holding between elements of the world. The
nature of things gives the foundation for the authority of moral demands, but
their obligating character is determined by the relations between circumstances
and agents. Clarke maintains that “[t]here is a Fitness or Suitableness of certain
Circumstances to certain Persons, and an Unsuitableness of others; founded in
the nature of things, and the Qualifications of Persons.” It is, thus, not directly
from the nature of things, but “from the different relations of different Persons
one to another” that “there necessarily arises a fitness or unfitness of certain
manners of Behaviour of some Persons towards others” (SCW, 2: 608). In
particular circumstances, it is simply fitting to “so deal with every Man, as in
like circumstances we could reasonably expect he should deal with Us” (SCW, 2:
619), and that we “endeavour to promote in general, to the utmost of our power,
the welfare and happiness of all men” (SCW, 2: 621). The ways in which we
ought to do so are examined by Clarke according to the traditional distinction
between obligations towards God, others, and oneself (cf. SCW, 2: 619ff).
Unlike Cudworth, Clarke does not rely on the assumption of the intrinsic
teleological character of the nature of things. (Cudworth’s Treatise on Eternal
and Immutable Morality would appear only later, in 1731.) Through his often
unclear talk of “fitness,” Clarke emphasizes that moral distinctions not only
have a foundation in reality, or in the “reason of things,” but are evident to
the mind. He thereby stresses the epistemological character of moral realism
in a way that profoundly influenced the discussions which followed.1
Applying an already familiar analogy, Clarke holds that the relations of fitness
or unfitness are somewhat like mathematical relations, and are as evident as

1
See Irwin 2008: 378f.

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they are (cf. SCW, 2: 609, 613f).2 He maintains, therefore, that reason is the
faculty of the soul granting access to moral obligations: “The indispensable
necessity of all the great and moral Obligations of Natural Religion” is “in
general deducible even demonstrably, by a Chain of clear and undeniable
reasoning” (SCW, 2: 598).
In spite of the evidence of moral fitnesses and the analogy with mathema-
tical truths, however, freedom makes an essential difference between theore-
tical assent and practical determination: as Clarke remarks, “Assent to a plain
speculative Truth, is not in a Man’s power to withhold; but to Act according to
the plain Right and Reason of things, this he may, by the natural Liberty of his
Will, forbear” (SCW, 2: 613).3 If moral truths are ignored and consequently not
put into practice, this happens not because of epistemic difficulties, but because
of moral shortcomings, that is, “corruption of Manners, or perverseness of
Spirit” (SCW, 2: 609), or because of the willingness to be persuaded by the bad
philosophy of those “who had in earnest asserted and attempted to prove, that
there is no natural and unalterable difference between Good and Evil” (SCW, 2:
609; cf. 614). In fact, moral cognition is accessible to “any Man of ordinary
capacity, and unbiassed judgment” (SCW, 2: 609).
Clarke holds it to be equally evident that the obligatory force of the law of
nature is eternal and therefore wholly independent of any reward or punish-
ment: “the view of particular Rewards or Punishments, which is only an
after-consideration, and does not at all alter the nature of Things, cannot be
the original cause of the Obligation of the Law” (SCW, 2: 627f). In fact,
these eternal and necessary differences of things make it fit and reasonable
for Creatures so to act; they cause it to be their Duty, or lay an Obligation
upon them, so to do; even separate from the consideration of these Rules
being the positive Will or Command of God; and also antecedent to any
respect or regard, expectation or apprehension, of any particular private and
personal Advantage or Disadvantage. (SCW, 2: 608)

Taking the Platonic side on Euthyphro’s problem, Clarke thus holds that
the immutable law based in the nature of things “is commanded by God
because ’tis Holy and Good” (SCW, 2: 627). God, “who has no Superior to
direct him [. . .] yet constantly obliges himself to govern the World by” the
same “eternal Reason of Things” wherein all obligations lie (SCW, 2: 614).
Therefore, moral obligations belong to natural religion not because they
2
On the analogy between morals and mathematics in eighteenth-century rational-
ism, see Gill 2007.
3
On Clarke’s conception of freedom, see Harris 2005: 46f.

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depend on God’s command, but because they are rooted in the perfect order
of things created by God’s perfect nature (cf. SCW, 2: 549). In virtue of the
same “Reason of Things” human understanding, finite and corrupt, needs
God’s assistance and revelation.
Some of the main points of Clarke’s view were developed in different terms
by William Wollaston (1659–1724) in The Religion of Nature Delineated (RND; 1st
edn 1722/1724). Wollaston emphasizes the epistemological character of moral
realism by expressing the centrality of relations between actions and circum-
stances in the vocabulary of propositions.4 In his formulation the law of nature
demands “That every intelligent, active, and free being should so behave
himself, as by no act to contradict truth; or, that he should treat every thing
as being what it is” (RND, 18). Since “[t]ruth is but a conformity to nature”
(RND, 9), an action can thus express a truth or contradict it, if it corresponds to
the circumstances or not. Its value (or “significancy,” as Wollaston puts it) can
be assessed with regard to its conformity to the nature of things, governed by
eternal axioms. In these terms, Wollaston believed, the nature of moral
demands should become clearer than through referring to “fitnesses of things.”
On the other hand, Clarke’s views were attacked by writers maintaining a
theological voluntarist conception, such as John Clarke in The Foundation of
Morality in Theory and Practice (1726). However, the debate’s main focus
gradually shifted in a different direction, as writers defending Clarke’s view
opposed Hutcheson’s sentimentalism, thereby making the contrast between
rationalism and sentimentalism the centre of the discussion. While at the
beginning of the century Clarke had taken his adversaries to be Hobbes,
deists, and voluntarists, the epistemological issue now became predominant.
Gilbert Burnet (1690–1726) engaged the views put forward in Hutcheson’s
Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in an important
exchange of letters with Hutcheson (BL, 1735), which prompted Hutcheson to
clarify aspects of his view in the Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Burnet,
explicitly following Clarke and Wollaston, formulated several of the critical
remarks taken up by later opponents of moral sentimentalism.5 Analogously,
Burnet argues that Hutcheson has “rested satisfied with the bare Description
of Moral Good and Evil, by the Effects the Apprehension of them work in us”
(BL, vi). In fact, feelings result from the cognition of moral truths through
reason. On the contrary, Burnet maintains that while affection can merely be

4
On Wollaston’s view of morals, see Tweyman 1976 and Tilley 2012.
5
On the Burnet–Hutcheson debate see Gill 2006, ch. 12.

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physically good, moral goodness is only predicated on free actions, and

consists in appropriateness to the power of an agent as such (cf. BL, 79).
Along similar lines, John Balguy (1686–1748) addressed Hutcheson’s view
in his Foundation of Moral Goodness (1728; A Second Part, with Responses by an
Advocate of Sentimentalism, 1729). If virtue should consist in benevolent affec-
tions “depending upon Instincts,” as Balguy takes Hutcheson to say, then
morality would be “of an arbitrary and positive Nature” (FMG, 8). The
sentimentalist view is thereby reduced to a variant of arbitrarism, analogous
to voluntarism. Against such a view, Balguy reaffirms that “virtue, or moral
goodness, is the conformity of our moral actions to the reasons of things”
(FMG, 28; cf. 55). If virtue does not consist in affections, these are not to be
expunged from moral life, but they are merely derivative, as effects of the
evidence of moral truths. Therefore, Balguy rejects Hutcheson’s distinction
between exciting and justifying reasons (cf. FMG, 41f). On Balguy’s view, an
affection for goodness is not “planted in the mind,” but only produced by the
perception of goodness (cf. FMG, 53f). Accordingly, obligation as “a state of
the mind” is a function of our understanding, which provides “some motive,
some inducement, some reason, that is fit to influence and incline the will,
and prevail with it to choose and act accordingly” (FMG2, 14; cf. LT, 6ff).

MORAL RATIONALISM RESTATED : PRICE

The union of moral realism and moral rationalism reached a higher level of
complexity in Richard Price’s Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (RPQ,
1758). Price (1723–1791) takes over the core of earlier moral realism, maintain-
ing the independent reality of moral distinctions, but at the same time
puts forward a more systematic version of moral rationalism which is
rich in original distinctions and new arguments.6 Price pursues further
Balguy’s attack on sentimentalism and is also influenced by Cudworth’s
anti-voluntarist view of “eternal and immutable” morality.
The epistemological aspect of the dispute against the sentimentalists is
particularly conspicuous, as Price begins his argument with a thorough
critique of Locke’s epistemology, which he regards as the philosophical
premise of the sentimentalist account of moral concepts. In the Platonic
view that he advocates, on the contrary, reason is capable of generating new
ideas through intuition. Price thus maintains that the concepts of right and
6
The most recent examination of Price’s view is in Irwin 2008: 714–53. For more
detailed studies on Price’s moral view, see Hudson 1970 and Allegri 2005.

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wrong belong to notions that are not derived from the senses, but originate
from rational intuition. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain the
intrinsic necessity of moral truths, namely that moral concepts are immuta-
ble notions that “denote what actions are. Now whatever any thing is, that it
is, not by will, or decree, or power, but by nature and necessity” (RPQ, 50).
Accounts built on the demands of self-love and on God’s commands are not
able to explain this fundamental feature of morality, since they ultimately
construe moral features as belonging to our responses to actions. In fact, Price
argues that the moral qualities themselves belong to actions and, more
specifically, that they are to be understood as irreducible properties: “Were
not this true, it would be palpably absurd in any case to ask, whether it is right
to obey a command, or wrong to disobey it; and the propositions, obeying a
command is right, or producing happiness is right, would be most trifling, as
expressing no more than obeying a command, is obeying a command, or
producing happiness, is producing happiness” (RPQ, 16f; cf. 43). Much of the
attention devoted to Price’s thought in the twentieth century focused on this
point, which is regarded as an anticipation of Moore’s “open-question” argu-
ment. Price’s argument is even more general than Moore’s, as it concerns not
only “good,” but all fundamental moral notions, such as “right,” “wrong,” and
“obligation.” Remarkably, his anti-reductionism leads Price to apply the same
argument also to the naturalist accounts of Wollaston and of other followers of
Clarke, when he observes that expressions like “acting suitably to the nature of
things [. . .]; conformity to truth; [. . .] congruity and incongruity between
actions and relations [. . .] are of no use, and have little meaning, if considered
as intended to define virtue; for they evidently presuppose it” (RPQ, 125).7
Price rejects not only voluntarist accounts of moral obligation, but also
Hutcheson’s psychological account of obligation. Unlike Balguy, Price insists
on the impossibility of defining basic moral concepts through non-moral notions
in order to argue that obligation cannot be understood merely as the state of
mind arising from the perception of a reason to act, but lies in fact in the
rightness of action itself (cf. RPQ, 105, 114). The perception of the rightness of an
action gives a reason to act accordingly, thereby providing the agent with a
motive. Like Balguy, Price insists that the feelings motivating one to act are
merely effects of the intellectual apprehension of moral demands. A “perception
of the understanding” is connected with a “feeling of the heart” (RPQ, 62). The
derivative nature of the emotional aspect of moral choice, however, is not

7
On the differences between Price’s view and naturalistic versions of rationalism see
Irwin 2008: 730ff.

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merely causal. Price holds that “[r]eason is [. . .] the natural and authoritative
guide of a rational being” (RPQ, 109).
Such formulations show that, if he often draws on Cudworth’s views, Price
is also strongly influenced by Butler on significant points, as he himself stresses
on the very first page of the Review. The most important of them is probably
the rejection of Hutcheson’s reduction of virtue to benevolence. Price pushes
this line of thought further, arguing for a more complex picture of the content
of moral demands. Several aspects of virtue are self-evident: gratitude, vera-
city, beneficence, justice, along with our duty to God and our duties to
ourselves, are all equally perceived as obligatory. Price recognizes that this
view of virtue entails that there can be conflicts between obligations stemming
from different “heads of virtue.” However, these conflicts can be resolved, at
least in principle, and depend not on intrinsic features of morality, but on the
limits of the human grasp of moral matters. The insistence on the plurality of
the aspects of virtue is another element of Price’s view that received attention
in the twentieth century, when it was associated with W.D. Ross’s conception
of prima facie duties. Unlike Ross and other normative pluralists, though, Price
at the same time strongly maintains the necessary unity of virtue, arguing that
the different “heads of virtue [. . .] should be considered as only different
modifications and views of one original, all-governing law” (RPQ, 165).

PERFECTIONIST MORAL REALISM AGAINST

THEOLOGICAL VOLUNTARISM : WOLFF

In the German philosophical discussion of the same decades another version

of moral rationalism took centre stage. Its most significant and influential
champion was Christian Wolff (1679–1754), who developed very extensively
some of Leibniz’s ideas in moral philosophy. Wolff’s early contact with
Leibniz, which led to an extensive exchange of letters, was crucial for his
thought in general and for his moral philosophy in particular. Leibniz’s
critical remarks against voluntarist accounts of morality prompted Wolff to
reject Pufendorf’s position, which had influenced him up till then. Drawing
on Leibniz’s ideas, Wolff developed at great length a naturalist conception of
morality, first in the German exposition of his system (1710–1725), and then in
the much more detailed Latin version (1728–1754).8
8
The most comprehensive study of Wolff’s thought, which also analyzes his moral
philosophy at length, is Campo 1980. For more recent studies see Schwaiger 1995
and Schröer 1988.

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Leibniz, however, did not inspire Wolff’s own project of a “universal

practical philosophy” (philosophia practica universalis). In fact, Wolff first
made contact with Leibniz by sending him an early draft. After a first outline
was published in 1703, Wolff developed the project extensively in his subse-
quent works, always regarding it as one of his most significant contributions
to philosophy in general.9 Drawing on the early modern debates on the
method of philosophy, Wolff held that practical philosophy would have been
capable of achieving certainty only if based on a preliminary inquiry of the
fundamental elements of practical life. Universal practical philosophy should
be a general theory of praxis, providing the proper foundation for the three
special practical sciences of ethics, politics, and economics. Wolff does not
understand universal practical philosophy as a mere systematic introduction
to the substantive parts of the system, though, but rather as an inquiry into
the nature of the will that directs free actions towards their fitting end.10
Through an empirical theory of the will, practical philosophy can be effective
and achieve its essential aim of directing the conduct of human beings.11 One
of the most important points of Wolff’s theory of the will is his psychological
account of obligation: “To obligate someone to do or omit something is only
to connect a motive of willing or not willing to it” (DE, § 8; 335).12 Wolff
thereby develops at greater length a view rather close to Balguy’s.
In Wolff’s view, the fundamental normative concept is perfection, which
he understands primarily in metaphysical terms as “concordance of the
manifold” (DM, § 152), equating it with what the Scholastics called “transcen-
dental goodness” (cf. PPO, § 503). In the practical domain, perfection consists
in the coherence of actions towards the best possible realization of human
nature and its essential ends (cf. PPU1, § 9). Wolff formulates the “law of
nature” accordingly as follows: “Do what makes you and your condition, or
that of others, more perfect; omit what makes it less perfect” (DE, § 15; 336).
Since Wolff maintains that the morality of actions depends on the perfection
that they can bring about, his account is decidedly consequentialist. Good is
thus “what makes ourselves and our condition more perfect” (DM, § 422; cf.
DE, § 3). The bindingness of the law of nature has natural grounds. Wolff

9
PPU1 and PPU2.
10
Cf. PPU1, § 3: “universal practical philosophy is the affective practical science of
directing free actions through the most general rules [scientia affectiva practica
dirigendi actiones liberas per regulas generalissimas].”
11
On Wolff’s idea of a universal practical philosophy, see Schwaiger 2005.
12
Page references following DE clause numbers are to the translation in Schneewind
2003.

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holds that moral obligation cannot arise from the threat of sanctions or from
the command of a superior. The law of nature is binding in virtue of a
“natural obligation” since “nature has connected motives with men’s inher-
ently good and bad actions,” “because the good and bad that we meet in
actions are the ground of willing or not willing them” (DE, § 9; 335).
Assessing the morality of actions requires an empirical investigation of
their effects: “if one will judge whether actions are good or evil, one must
research what alterations in our internal condition of body and soul as well as
in our external condition they carry in their train, and thereby attend to
whether the altered condition is concordant with the essence and nature of
the human being, that is, of the body and the soul, and with the preceding
condition, or is contradictory to it” (DE, § 4; 335). While Wolff initially insisted
on the constitutive connection between perfection and the essential nature of
things, his understanding of the demand of perfection comes increasingly
close to eudaimonism, as is especially apparent in the Latin works. If the
genuine moral motive is the goodness of actions (cf. PPU2, § 369), happiness is
ultimately what really motivates us to act according to the natural law (cf.
PPU2, §§ 326, 328).13 Elaborating on the foundation given in universal practical
philosophy, Wolff provides a very extensive treatment of ethical duties,
especially in the five-volume Philosophia moralis (PM, 1750–1753), which dis-
cusses in great detail specific issues of the obligations towards the self, God,
and others. The content of the particular duties consists in their contribution
to the agent’s own perfection, or to the perfection of others.
The faculty that teaches the law of nature is reason, which Wolff under-
stands as “the capacity to have insight into the interconnection of truths”
(DM, § 368). Yet Wolff stresses the epistemological character of his view less
than do Clarke and his followers. Since Wolff, like Leibniz, sees no divide
between sensible and intellectual cognition, his view does not entail any
strong opposition to empiricist accounts of morality. In fact, as he stresses the
necessity of a “marriage of reason and experience” in every domain, Wolff
emphasizes that moral life needs not only intellectual insight, but also
sensible and experiential cognition. Furthermore, Wolff holds that an impor-
tant role in morality is played by pleasure, which, following Leibniz, he
understands as the mind’s response to the cognition of perfection.
Following Leibniz, Wolff rejects voluntarism, but at the same time stresses
the harmony between natural law and creation, natural obligation and divine
obligation. As creator of the whole of reality, God is the author of the law of

13
On perfection and happiness in Wolff’s moral philosophy, see Schwaiger 1995.

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nature (cf. PPU1, § 273), according to Wolff, who also denies that sanctions are
necessary to moral obligation (cf. DE, § 35). Yet the cognition of the content of
morality does not require Christian revelation, but merely insight into the
nature of things. Applying this general thesis, Wolff maintains in his lecture
on The Practical Philosophy of the Chinese (PPC, given in 1721) that the wisdom
of Confucius shows that Christian revelation is not needed to have access to
the criteria of moral virtue.14 As he later clarifies, however, full-fledged virtue
can be reached only through the teachings of the Christian religion.15
While the most significant opponents of the British rationalists were the
advocates of the new moral sentimentalism, Wolff’s adversaries were mainly
inspired by religious orthodoxy. His appreciation of Confucius’s practical
philosophy in the lecture of 1721 attracted such hostile attention that the
Prussian government sent him into exile. The opposition was, however, not
only academic, religious, and political, but also philosophical. Wolff’s leading
philosophical opponent was a theologian close to the traditional Lutheran
party, Christian August Crusius (1715–1775). In his main work on ethics, the
Instructions for a Reasonable Life (Anweisung, vernünftig zu leben, AVL, 1744),
Crusius developed a divine command account of morals, presenting core
ideas of Lutheranism in a philosophically updated form.16 Responding to a
traditional objection against voluntarism, Crusius observes that defending
such a view does not amount to making the good arbitrary, because “the will
of God, in which the highest laws of nature have their ground, is not a free
but a necessary will” (AVL, § 173; 579).17 Crusius formulates the general moral
rule as follows: “Do what is in accordance with the perfection of God and
your relations to him and further what accords with the essential perfection
of human nature, and omit the opposite” (AVL, § 137; 576). The formulation is
influenced by Crusius’s adversary Wolff, but at the same time shows up the
main difference between the two accounts. The morally relevant perfection
that sets the normative standard to which human agents have to conform, for
Crusius, is God’s. Therefore, “morally good [. . .] is what is in accordance
with the moral designs of God, that is, those that he wills to have forwarded
through the reason and free wills of created minds or, to put it otherwise, the
morally good is what agrees with his laws” (AVL, § 26; 570). Accordingly, “the
love of God above all things is the main virtue from which all others must
14
On this text see Louden 2003. 15 See Albrecht 1992.
16
The only book-length treatment of Crusius’s moral philosophy is Benden 1972. For
a concise presentation, see Schneewind 1998: 445–56.
17
Page references following AVL clause numbers are to the translation in Schneewind
2003.

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flow” (AVL, § 240; 582). Moral obligation arises from human beings’ depen-
dence on God (cf. AVL, §§ 133, 194), which is fully independent of the
representation of sanctions.
Crusius states, however, that the general moral rule is found a posteriori to
summarize the content of ethical duties, or of “most of them, at least” (AVL, §
137; 576). The foundation of morals is given not with a rule, but with the fact
of human beings’ dependence on God together with their immediate aware-
ness of it. This fundamental bond expresses itself in human nature through
the “drive of conscience” (Gewissenstrieb), which Crusius understands as a
“fundamental drive to recognize a divine moral law” (AVL, § 132) and, with
that, “universal obligations [. . .] by which we have to abide out of obedience”
(AVL, § 133). For Crusius, reason can be helpful in providing an inferential
knowledge of moral demands, but is not the faculty responsible for moral
cognition and action. Conscience plays this role, enabling every human being
to easily judge of moral matters through “a natural sensation of what is right
and proper” (AVL, § 368), thereby teaching us what our duties are, without
referring to any rule. The crucial feature of conscience, however, is in
Crusius’s view not a strictly epistemological primacy, but a direct connection
to God’s will. As Crusius remarks, “one should not confuse conscience with
consciousness in general or with the awareness of the perfection or imperfec-
tion of one’s actions in general.” In fact, “the German word Gewissen does not
express what in the good Latin writers is called conscientia, but what is called
religio” (AVL, § 132; cf. 574), namely, a fundamental bond with God.
Crusius devotes much attention not only to the divine will, but also to the
finite will of the addressees of God’s command. He bases his moral philoso-
phy on a preliminary inquiry into the natural features of the will, which he
calls “thelematology” (i.e. the doctrine of will and choice). A central role in
this inquiry has the idea that the human will is moved by three fundamental
drives or impulses (Triebe). Besides the crucial drive of conscience, which
represents Crusius’s key to the foundation of moral obligation in finite
beings, Crusius isolates a drive to the perfection of oneself (AVL, § 111) and
a drive consisting in “the urge for union with objects in which we perceive
perfection”(AVL, § 122; 574).
In the disputes with the adversaries of Wolff’s rationalism, some Wolffians
tried to overcome the limits of Wolff’s own view. The most original among
them is probably Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762), who proposes
significant changes to the official Wolffian position.18 If some of Wolff’s

18
On Baumgarten see Schwaiger 2011.

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adversaries had pointed out that his view amounted to mere eudaimonism,
Baumgarten strongly downplays the moral significance of happiness and does
not take over Wolff’s idea of the continuity between perfection and happi-
ness. Baumgarten focuses, instead, on perfection alone, trying to clarify its
moral significance through a distinction between perfection as a means and
perfection as an end (cf. IP, § 43; EP, § 10). Furthermore, Baumgarten is closer to
Wolff in understanding obligation as deriving from “overriding impulsive
causes” (cf. IP, §§ 12–16). In Baumgarten’s account, however, the concept of
obligation acquires a much more important role, as it is understood as unifying
the whole practical sphere: practical philosophy is the “science of the obligations
of man to be known without faith” (IP, § 1), and ethics specifically deals with
internal obligations (cf. EP, § 1). Finally, moral obligation does not rest on the
normative authority of nature itself, as Wolff maintained. In fact, Baumgarten
holds that moral demands can be fully obligatory only by virtue of God’s
rational will (cf. IP, § 69). His rationalism is thus significantly qualified by the
explicit rejection of Grotius’s “impossible hypothesis” that the law of nature and
moral obligation would hold even if God would not exist (cf. IP, § 71).
In spite of its opponents, Wolff’s rationalism maintained its primacy in
German moral philosophy during most of the eighteenth century, probably
because of its capacity to accommodate different developments. Unlike the
views of Clarke and his followers, Wolff’s rationalism did not entail an
uncompromising opposition to sentimentalism. In fact, several Wolffians
took over Leibniz’s and Wolff’s acknowledgment of the role of pleasure in
the determination of the will, drawing on the underlying idea of a continuity of
the different grades of representation ranging from the sensible to the intel-
lectual. A case in point is Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786).19 More generally,
the idea of a universal practical philosophy was regarded by many as being to
some degree independent of Wolff’s perfectionism. Even an empiricist in the
wake of Locke and common-sense philosophy such as Johann Georg Heinrich
Feder (1740–1821) stated repeatedly the great importance of Wolff’s innovation
in providing moral philosophy with a proper foundation through a prelimin-
ary inquiry of that kind.20 In Feder’s view, however, that project must be
developed focusing on the two fundamental drives, self-love and sympathy.
The Wolffian project, while explicitly appreciated, was thereby adapted to a
view of morality closer to Hutcheson’s and Smith’s, where the normative
reference to perfection thus no longer had a role in the account of moral life.

19 20
See Kuehn 1987: 42f. See e.g. Feder 1779–1793, vol. 1: 19f.

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 Rationalism and Perfectionism

ABBREVIATIONS

AVL Anweisung vernünftig zu leben, Crusius 1969

BL Letters Between the Late Mr. Gilbert Burnet, and Mr. Hutchinson [sic],
Concerning the True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness, Burnet
1735
DE Deutsche Ethik, Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und
Lassen zur Beförderung ihrer Glückseligkeit, Wolff 1996
DM Deutsche Metaphysik, Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und
der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, den Liebhabern der
Wahrheit mitgetheilt, Wolff 1983
EP Ethica philosophica, Baumgarten 1969
FMG The Foundation of Moral Goodness, Balguy 1728
FMG2 The Second Part of the Foundation of Moral Goodness, Balguy 1733a
IP Initia philosophiae practicae primae, Baumgarten 1760
LT The Law of Truth Or, the Obligations of Reason Essential to All Religion,
Balguy 1733b
PM Philosophia moralis sive ethica, Wolff 1970
PPC Rede über die praktische Philosophie der Chinesen, Wolff 1985
PPO Philosophia prima sive ontologia methodo scientifica pertractata qua
omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur, Wolff 1962
PPU1 Philosophia practica universalis, methodo scientifica pertractata, Pars
prior . . ., Wolff 1971
PPU2 Philosophia practica universalis, methodo scientifica pertractata, Pars
posterior . . ., Wolff 1979
RND The Religion of Nature Delineated, Wollaston 1738
RPQ A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, Price 1974
SCW The Works of Samuel Clarke, Clarke 1738

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An asterisk denotes secondary literature especially suitable for further reading.

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Allegri, F., 2005, Le radici storiche dell’etica analitica. Richard Price e il fondamento della virtù,
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 s t e f a n o ba c i n

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