Volonté générale e a autonomia da vontade. A presença de Rousseau na origem político-jurídica da filosofia moral de Kant

This paper explores the influence of Rousseau’s political philosophy in the emergence of the concept of autonomy of the will in Kant’s moral philosophy. Taking the decade of 1770 as the chronological basis in the development of Kant's thought, it will be argued that the notion of an absolutely binding moral principle takes as a model – whose origin is a juridical and rousseauist one – a community of rational beings governed by autonomous laws which harmonize the freedom and the will of each individual.