Christian August Crusius and His Ethics

Abstract

Due to the enormous importance of Kantian ethics for the development of the entire Western European philosophy, it is worth asking about the origins of its formation. A possible answer to this question can be the entire German tradition preceding Kant in relation to theoretical and practical philosophical constructions, called the era of the German Enlightenment. Chri­stian Augustus Crusius, one of the brightest philosophers of this time, has long been consid­ered by researchers as a probable source of many later characteristic features of Kant’s moral philosophy. However, there are still very few works devoted to the work of this thinker. In addition, almost all of them are aimed at his polemic with Christian Wolf regarding the law of sufficient reason. Crusius himself is also considered in conjunction with other thinkers of the era of the German Enlightenment. There are practically no detailed studies of moral teaching at all. This state of affairs indicates the undeserved oblivion of Crusius, which is expressed, among other things, in the absence of translations of Crusius into Russian. The article, prefixed to the translation of an important chapter from the treatise on ethics, ex­amines the main features of Crusius’ practical philosophy, highlights common aspects of Cru­sian and Kantian ethics based on the analysis of the texts of both philosophers and the simi­larity of some basic terms, and makes assumptions about the influence. The reasoning is based on the concept of virtue, which both Crusius and Kant accept as central. In addition, the stages in the formation of the ethics of Crusius himself are briefly revealed, the differ­ences from Crusius that allowed Kant to develop his own moral teaching are indicated.