The Drive for the Presentation of the Moral Law in Maimon

Salomon Maimon problematizes the presentation (Darstellung) of moral rationality as a weak point in Kant’s ethical theory, calling into question the objective reality or empirical efficacy of practical reason, as Benjamin Pollock has noted. Maimon attempts to engage this problem via a drive “to present thought-forms or laws in concreto” that is common to both moral and aesthetic judgments. Pollock explains that it is not absolute freedom that is “presented” for Maimon but “the acquired freedom…[of] creatures endowed with a drive to overcome our sensibility.” Pollock notes further that Maimon describes the pursuit of this acquired freedom as the cultivation of a skill of resisting sensible impulses so that the universal can present or manifest itself in sensible experience. Here, I explicate what Maimon means by a Trieb zur Darstellung des Moralgesetzes, a drive toward presentation of the moral law. This drive is one of the central features that distinguishes Maimon’s early ethical theory from Kant’s. I base my interpretation on the following three texts: the Versuch einer neuen Darstellung des Moralprinzips of 1794, the Prolegomena zur Kritik der praktischen Vernunft of 1797, and the essay Über die ersten Gründe der Moral of 1798.