Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is one of the most influential works in ethics and moral philosophy. It was published in 1785, just a few years after Mill’s Utilitarianism. Kant argued that morality requires an autonomous will, or autonomy, which he believed to be independent from our desires or emotions. He also proposed that it is only through this autonomic will that we can determine what is morally right or wrong. Furthermore, he claimed that all moral decisions should be made on the basis of universal principles applicable to everyone — known as the Categorical Imperative. This work has been hugely influential in modern ethical thought, setting out core ideas such as human dignity and respect for persons which are at its heart.
tl have a letter from the late excellent Sulzer* in which he asks me what the cause might be that the teachings of virtue, however much they contain that is convincing to reason, accomh Bestimmung * den Anschlag zu fassen 1 bestehend sein miissen 22 FROM POPULAR PHILOSOPHY TO METAPHYSICS empirical field, that reason, in the consciousness of its dignity, despises the latter and can gradually become their master; on the other hand a mixed doctrine of morals, put together from incentives of feeling and inclination and also of rational concepts, must make the mind waver between motives that cannot be brought under any principle, that can lead only contingently to what is good and can very often also lead to what is evil. From what has been said it is clear that all moral concepts have their seat and origin completely a priori in reason, and indeed in the most common reason just as in reason that is speculative in the highe
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[for we are] well aware that, unless we are in possession of this, it would be I will not say futile to determine precisely for speculative appraisal the moral element of duty in all that conforms with duty, but impossible to base plish so little. By trying to prepare a complete answer I delayed too long. However, my answer is simply that the teachers themselves have not brought their concepts to purity, but, since they want to do too well by hunting everywhere for motives to moral goodness, in trying to make their medicine really strong they spoil it. For the most ordinary o
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Even children of moderate age feel this impression, and one should never represent duties to them in any other way. * Rechtschaffenheit 'The structure of this sentence, from the semicolon to "impossible to base morals," has been slightly modified. 23 GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS morals on their genuine principles even for
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s minds for the highest good in the world.m However, in order to advance by natural steps in this study not merely from common moral appraisal (which is here very worthy of respect) to philosophic, as has already been done, but from a popular philosophy, which goes no further than it can by groping with the help of examples, to metaphysics (which no longer lets itself be held back by anything empirical and, since it must measure out the whole sum of rational cognition of this kind, goes if need be all the way to ideas, where examples themselves fail us), we must follow and present distinctly the practical faculty of reason, from its general rules of determination to the point where the concept of duty arises from it. Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the capacity to act in accordance with the repr
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