Kant’s Principles of Adjudication and Execution in the Context of the Enlightenment

In the 1770s’ lectures on ethics, Kant distinguishes between two principles of obligation: the principle of adjudication and the principle of execution. The former is the normative standard of moral evaluation, while the latter denotes the incentive for performing an obligatory action. This distinction is significant in that it anticipates Kant’s mature position of combining these two principles, i.e. the moral law later becomes the supreme principle of moral judgment and (via respect) is itself the incentive to moral action. I explicate Kant’s distinction in view of the moral thought of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Christian Wolff. I challenge the dominant views which interpret Kant’s distinction in connection with Hutcheson and Smith, and argue that it is best understood in relation to Wolff’s conception of obligation. While Hutcheson’s distinction between exciting and justifying reasons is broadly similar to Kant’s distinction, Hutcheson’s account does not center on the concept of obligation. Furthermore, I argue that Smith’s distinction between the character of virtue and the faculty of the mind by which it is recommended to us does not concern the normative and motivational moments of moral agency, but rather the meta-ethical question of the nature of virtue and the faculty that conditions its appraisal. Finally, I show that Wolff’s conception of obligation involves normative and motivational aspects conceptually similar to Kant’s distinction between the two principles of obligation.