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.