Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

by Immanuel Kant

The remaining kind of judgment, synthetic a priori, would be one which tells us something new about its subject, and yet which is known independently of experience – on the basis of reasoning alone.

When reason discovers something about itself. But is this not experience in its own right?

If we do know, then, that the world in general behaves in a lawlike way, we must have synthetic a priori knowledge. A body of such knowledge is called a “metaphysics.”

morality is concerned with practical questions – not with the way things are, but with the way things ought to be.

Morality, conscience and justice exist/operate in a different modality, not in the indicative.

Kant thinks, the principle that tells us that we ought to behave in a lawlike way must be synthetic a priori, if ethics exists at all.

And this is not extrapolation, as the lawlikeness of nature might be

Toss this book into the air, and it will obey that law. But it will not, when it reaches its highest point, say to itself, “I ought to go back down now, for gravity requires it.”

The theory of practical reason is therefore a theory of imperatives. Imperatives may be either hypothetical or categorical.

A hypothetical imperative tells you that if you will something, you ought also to will something else: for example, if you will to be healthy, then you ought to exercise.

Categorical imperative vs. hypothetical (conditional) imperatives

when I think of a categorical imperative I know at once what it contains.

Since if the imperative is to be categorical there can be no such condition, all that remains is that the categorical imperative should tell us that our maxims themselves must be laws – that is, that they must be universal, that being the characteristic of laws.

Be just

Although Kant denies that we can ever know for certain that someone has been morally motivated, the moral law cannot have authority over our wills unless it is possible for us to be motivated by it.

It is possible to be motivated by moral law.

As we saw earlier, the sense in which we are trying to show that the moral law governs our wills is not that it actually moves us, either always or sometimes, but that it moves us in so far as we are rational.

Being rational = being moral

we must suppose that in our capacity as members of the world of understanding, we give laws to ourselves as members of the world of sense.

Completed his dissertation, Concise Outlines of Some Reflections on Fire, and received his degree from the University of Königsberg

these laws are either laws of nature, or of freedom.

Physics vs ethics

the first as laws according to which everything 4:388 happens, the second as those according to which everything ought to happen,

the command: thou shalt not lie,

There is no such commandent

Even if by some particular disfavor of fate, or by the scanty endowment of a stepmotherly nature, this will should entirely lack the capacity to carry through its purpose; if despite its greatest striving it should still accomplish nothing, and only the good will were to remain (not, of course, as a mere wish, but as the summoning of all means that are within our control); then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.

What I recognize immediately as a law for myself I recognize with respect, which signifies merely the consciousness of the subordination of my will to a law, without mediation of other influences on my sense.

What I recognize as a law I recognize with respect

it is viewed as the effect of the law on the subject and not as its cause

Exteriority of the law evident in the person's respect for it beong its effect, not its cause.

Respect is actually the representation of a worth that infringes on my self-love.

a measure of exteriority

law is so extensive in its significance that it must hold not merely for human beings but for all rational beings as such,

the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will.

For when we think of such a will, then, even though a will that stands under laws may still be bound to this law by means of some interest, yet a will that is itself the supreme legislator cannot possibly, as such, depend on any interest;

The will of a rational being, like the emperor, both below and above the law

the dignity of a rational being that obeys no law other than that which at the same time it itself gives.

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price, or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced with something else, as its equivalent;

benevolence from principles (not from instinct)

He should have added, not ONLY from instinct, to avoid an extremist violation of common sense

they represent the will that performs them as the object of an immediate respect, for which nothing but reason is required to impose them upon the will, not to coax them out of it,

Respect - verecundia - the legislating will takes the place of external sacred authority that inspires fear.

Autonomy is thus the ground of the dignity of a human and of every rational nature.

Autonomy a sole ground for dignity

although we think of the concept of duty in terms of subjection to the law, yet at the same time we thereby picture 4:440 a certain sublimity and dignity in the person who fulfills all his duties.

Sublime and dignified subjection to duty

it does Virtue the honor of attributing to her immediately the delight and high esteem we have for her, and does not, 4:443 as it were, tell her to her face that it is not her beauty, but only our advantage that ties us to her.

Tell Virtue to her face that it is not her beauty but our advantage that ties us to her

Thus if freedom of the will is presupposed, morality along with its principle follows from it, by mere analysis of its concept.

but for beings who, like us, are also affected by sensibility, as incentives of a different kind, and in whose case what reason all by itself would do is not always done, that necessity of action is only called an ought, and the subjective necessity is distinguished from the objective one.

and this categorical ought represents a synthetic proposition a priori, because to my will affected by sensuous desires there is added the idea of the same will, but belonging to the world of the understanding,

NB: the synthetiic a priori statement that I ought to do X instead of Y is added to or corrects the synthetic a posteriori statement that I have done Y, or tend to do Y in reality.

it is just as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest human reason to rationalize freedom away.

as an intelligence, he is the actual self (whereas as a human being he is just appearance of himself ),

Very extremist

And thus we do not indeed comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, yet we do comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can reasonably be required of a philosophy that in its principles strives up to the boundary of human reason.