Incentives of the Mind: Kant and Baumgarten on the Impelling Causes of Desire

In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on his concept of an incentive ( Triebfeder ), which he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire, and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as the ‘impelling cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature.