Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Introduction

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (German Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten) is Immanuel Kant's 1785 short foundational work of moral philosophy. At approximately 30,000 words, it is the most concise and most accessible of Kant's three major ethical writings (alongside the Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, and the Metaphysics of Morals, 1797). It is the work in which the categorical imperative receives its most extended individual formulation, and the work most commonly assigned as the entry point into Kantian ethics.

The book is also the most-cited single work in modern moral philosophy. The Rawlsian recovery of Kantian ethics in the late twentieth century, the broader analytic engagement with the Groundwork through Christine Korsgaard, Onora O'Neill, Barbara Herman, Allen Wood, and many others, and the continuing role of the categorical imperative as the central alternative to virtue and consequentialist ethical frameworks, have together kept the Groundwork one of the most actively discussed works in contemporary ethics.

Form, length, date, language

The Groundwork is a single treatise of approximately 30,000 words in German, divided into a Preface and three sections (the First Section moves from common moral cognition to the philosophical concept of duty; the Second from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysics of morals; the Third from the metaphysics of morals to the critique of pure practical reason). The work was composed and published in 1785, in the middle of the most productive decade of Kant's Critical philosophy. The original language is German in Kant's distinctively careful philosophical style.

The relation between the Groundwork and Kant's later ethical writings has been continuously debated. The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) develops the metaethical framework in more systematic detail; the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) applies the framework to substantive ethical questions in both right (Doctrine of Right) and ethics (Doctrine of Virtue). The Groundwork is the bridge between Kant's theoretical philosophy (the Critique of Pure Reason) and his mature ethics.

Why it was written

Kant frames the Groundwork's project as the search for a pure moral philosophy — an account of moral principles that does not depend on empirical features of human nature, contingent social circumstances, or particular desires. The need for such an account, on Kant's view, follows from the categorical character of moral obligation: if moral demands are genuinely categorical (binding unconditionally, regardless of what we happen to want), then their foundation cannot lie in anything contingent.

The specific argumentative project of the Groundwork is to identify the supreme principle of morality and to establish its philosophical foundation. The first two sections work to identify the principle (the categorical imperative); the third section attempts the more difficult task of showing that this principle is actually binding on all rational beings.

Structure and argument

Preface. Kant frames the project: pure ethics must be distinguished from empirical anthropology; the foundational principles must be derived from pure reason alone.

First Section: Transition from Common Rational to Philosophical Moral Cognition. Kant begins from ordinary moral cognition: nothing in the world (and nothing beyond the world) can be conceived as good without limitation except a good will. Even other admirable qualities (intelligence, courage, perseverance) can be put to bad use if the will deploying them is not itself good. The good will is good not because of what it accomplishes but because of its willing in itself.

From this premise Kant moves to the analysis of moral worth in terms of duty: an action has moral worth not because of the inclination from which it is performed but because of the duty it expresses. The famous example: the shopkeeper who refrains from cheating customers because honest dealing is good for business acts in accordance with duty but not from duty; his action has no moral worth in the Kantian sense. The action has moral worth only when performed from recognition of the moral law as binding, regardless of what one happens to desire.

The First Section closes with a preliminary formulation of the supreme principle: I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

Second Section: Transition from Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant develops the categorical imperative through several formulations, arguing that they are equivalent in content but emphasize different aspects of the same moral law:

• The Formula of Universal Law: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
• The Formula of the Law of Nature (a variant of FUL): Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.
• The Formula of Humanity: Act so that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
• The Formula of Autonomy: act so that the will can regard itself as legislating universal law through its maxims.
• The Formula of the Kingdom of Ends: Act in accordance with maxims of a universally legislating member of a merely possible kingdom of ends.

Kant works through the four famous examples (the false-promise case, the suicide case, the rusting-talents case, the failure-to-help case) to illustrate how the categorical imperative tests proposed maxims.

Third Section: Transition from the Metaphysics of Morals to the Critique of Pure Practical Reason. The most difficult section. Kant attempts to establish that the categorical imperative is actually binding on all rational beings by showing that the will of a rational being is necessarily autonomous (self-legislating), and that autonomy requires the categorical imperative as its principle. The argument has been continuously contested; Kant himself moved away from the Groundwork Section III's deduction in the later Critique of Practical Reason, replacing it with a different argumentative strategy.

Key passages

• Section I, opening (4:393) — Nothing in the world, indeed nothing even beyond the world, can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.
• Section I, on duty (4:397–401) — the shopkeeper example and the analysis of moral worth.
• Section I, closing (4:402) — the preliminary formulation of the supreme principle.
• Section II (4:421) — the Formula of Universal Law.
• Section II (4:429) — the Formula of Humanity (treat humanity as an end, never merely as a means).
• Section II (4:431–434) — the Formula of Autonomy and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends.
• Section II (4:421–423) — the four classical examples.
• Section III (4:452–462) — the deduction of the categorical imperative through the analysis of freedom.

Reception history

The Groundwork was received in Germany as a major contribution to moral philosophy and substantially shaped the subsequent German philosophical tradition. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all engaged Kantian ethics extensively, often by way of substantial critique. Schiller's On Grace and Dignity (1793) attacked the Kantian denigration of inclination; Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1820) attacked Kantian formalism for its inability to give substantive ethical guidance.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw mixed reception of Kantian ethics. The utilitarian tradition (Bentham, Mill) developed substantially in opposition to Kant; the British idealist tradition (T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley) was more sympathetic but engaged Kant largely through Hegel; the early twentieth-century moral philosophy was variously engaged with Kant but did not place him at the center.

The major Anglo-American recovery of Kantian ethics belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) is recognizably Kantian in its central commitments; Christine Korsgaard's Creating the Kingdom of Ends (1996) and The Sources of Normativity (1996) developed sophisticated contemporary Kantian metaethics; Onora O'Neill, Barbara Herman, Allen Wood, and many others have developed substantial bodies of contemporary Kantian work. The Groundwork is now one of the most actively discussed works in contemporary moral philosophy.

Contemporary engagement

The standard German text is in volume IV of the Akademie Ausgabe. The standard English translations are Mary Gregor's (Cambridge, 1997) and Allen Wood's (Yale, 2002). Major recent scholarly work includes Christine Korsgaard's Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Barbara Herman's The Practice of Moral Judgment (1993), Allen Wood's Kantian Ethics (2008), Henry Allison's Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary (2011), and the Cambridge Companion to Kant's Ethics (Andrews Reath and Jens Timmermann, eds., 2010). Active scholarly debates concern the equivalence of the formulations, the adequacy of the Universal Law test, the structure of the Third Section's deduction, the relation between the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, and the contemporary applicability of Kantian moral theory.

Further reading

• Kant — the author
• Categorical Imperative — the central doctrine
• German Idealism — the tradition
• Critique of Pure Reason — the theoretical companion
• Free Will — the metaphysical condition the Groundwork presupposes
• Virtue — the rival ethical framework

Kant's short foundational work of moral philosophy. The most concise presentation of the categorical imperative.