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GAM / IT / FILM 228 Ethics in Gaming and Cinema
Case Analysis Template
Name:
Case title:
Answer EACH question below by integrating material from the module into the responses.
Section I. Recognize an Ethical Issue
Provide a brief description of the ethical issue, the specific harms, and the stakeholders
connected to the issue. Be sure to use concepts and principles from the module in your
response.
Type your response here.
Section II. Get the Facts
Based on the facts provided in the case and your own independent research, identify the
factual claims that are pertinent to the case analysis and the facts that are not known.
Responses should have evidence of research.
Type your response here.
Section III. Identify, Evaluate, and Recommend a Course of Action
Identify and evaluate alternatives for acting, frequently referencing ethical principles covered in
the module. Be sure to use specific and direct reference to module materials with proper
citation (either paraphrase or direct quotes). The analysis should conclude with a
recommendation for a specific course of action.
Type your response here.
FILM/GAM/IT 228 Ethics in Information Technology, computer games
and cinema.
Case Analysis Paper 1
After you have read https://mediaengagement.org/research/promotingsafety-or-infringing-on-privacy/ and other reading materials linked and attached to this file
complete the case analysis paper 1 by writing a response that is approximately 1,000
words (single space). Use the Case Analysis template to respond to each of the questions
by integrating material from the module into the responses. Be sure to cite sources
accurately and completely. Please note that you do not need to answer the discussion
questions at the bottom of the article.
Sources:
1. https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/deontology
2. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decisionmaking/rights/
3. https://d2l.depaul.edu/d2l/le/content/983704/viewContent/10738836/View
4. https://web.archive.org/web/20210415162239/https://iep.utm.edu/kantvie
w/ (Specifically 5. Moral Theory)
5. Read Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals,
Preface, first section, and Second section (reading material is
attached)
6. https://www.ethicsops.com/rights-test
7. https://www.ethicsops.com/choices-test
Note:
1. Please keep it simple and easy vocabulary words to understand. This will
be submitted to Turnitin.
2. If the assignment does not follow any direction It will have consequences.
Rethinking
the
Western
Tradition
The volumes in this series
seek to address the present debate
over the Western tradition
by reprinting key works of
that tradition along with essays
that evaluate each text from
di√erent perspectives.
EDITORIAL
COMMITTEE FOR
Rethinking
the
Western
Tradition
David Bromwich
Yale University
Gerald Graff
University of Illinois at Chicago
Geoffrey Hartman
Yale University
Samuel Lipman
(deceased)
The New Criterion
Gary Saul Morson
Northwestern University
Jaroslav Pelikan
Yale University
Marjorie Perloff
Stanford University
Richard Rorty
Stanford University
Alan Ryan
New College, Oxford
Ian Shapiro
Yale University
Frank M. Turner
Yale University
Allen W. Wood
Stanford University
Groundwork
for the
Metaphysics
of Morals
IMMANUEL KANT
Edited and translated by Allen W. Wood
with essays by
J. B. Schneewind
Marcia Baron
Shelly Kagan
Allen W. Wood
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Published with assistance from the Ernst Cassirer Publications Fund.
Copyright ∫ 2002 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publishers.
Printed in the United States of America by
Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804.
[Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. English]
Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals / Immanuel Kant ;
edited and translated by Allen W. Wood ; with essays by J. B. Schneewind . . . [et al.].
p. cm.—(Rethinking the Western tradition)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-09486-8 (cloth)—ISBN 0-300-09487-6 (paper)
1. Ethics—Early works to 1800. I. Wood, Allen W. II. Schneewind, J. B. (Jerome B.) III.
Title. IV. Series.
B2766.E6 W6613 2002
170—dc21 2002002605
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contributors
J. B. Schneewind is professor of philosophy (emeritus) at Johns Hopkins
University.
Marcia Baron is professor of Philosophy at Indiana University.
Shelly Kagan is Henry R. Luce Professor of Social Thought and Ethics at Yale
University.
Allen W. Wood is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor at Stanford
University.
Contents
Editor’s Preface
A Note on the Translation
Abbreviations
ix
xiii
xvii
Text
Immanuel Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) 1
Preface
3
First Section: Transition from common rational moral
cognition to philosophical moral cognition
9
Second Section: Transition from popular moral philosophy
to the metaphysics of morals
22
Third Section: Transition from the metaphysics of morals
to the critique of pure practical reason
63
Essays
1. Why Study Kant’s Ethics?
J. B. Schneewind
2. Acting from Duty
Marcia Baron
3. Kantianism for Consequentialists
Shelly Kagan
4. What Is Kantian Ethics?
Allen W. Wood
83
92
111
157
Glossary
183
Index
189
Editor’s Preface
Kant’s little book of 1785 is one of the most significant texts in the history of
ethics. It has been a standard of reference—sometimes a model to be developed and expanded on, sometimes a target of criticism—for moral philosophers from the German idealist and German Romantic traditions, for Victorians of the utilitarian school such as Mill and Sidgwick, for later British
idealists such as Green and Bradley, for the neo-Kantians, for twentiethcentury philosophers in both the continental and the anglophone traditions,
and for moral philosophers of all persuasions right down to the present day.
From the standpoint of the depth and originality of the ideas it contains, it
undoubtedly deserves this influence. But in the development of Kant’s own
moral thinking, it occupies a place that ought to make us question the
wisdom of treating it, the way moral philosophers customarily do, as the
definitive statement of Kant’s views on ethics.
Kant first gave notice of his intention to produce a system of moral
philosophy under the title ‘‘metaphysics of morals’’ about 1768. It took him
eighteen years to deliver even the first installment of the promised system,
which he gave a title indicative of the tentativeness and incompleteness of
what he thought he had so far accomplished: he was only laying the ground
for a ‘‘metaphysics of morals’’ by seeking out and establishing its first
principle.
Kant apparently began composing the Groundwork late in 1783. Letters
written by Kant’s brilliant but eccentric friend J. G. Hamann report that he
began writing about moral philosophy in order to provide an ‘anticritique’
of Christian Garve’s 1783 book on Cicero’s treatise On Duties. But according to Hamann, during the spring of 1784 this critical discussion of Garve
on Cicero was transformed into something quite different, a ‘‘Prodromus
der Moral’’ (Ak 4:626–28). The title ‘‘Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der
Sitten’’ is first mentioned in a letter from Hamann in September 1784.
Hamann’s correspondence reveals him to be an avid Kant-watcher,
sometimes a helpfully critical one. But there is reason to be skeptical about
his account of the genesis of the Groundwork. Hamann’s account has in-
x
Editor’s Preface
spired scholars as reputable as Klaus Reich and H. J. Paton to seek in the
Groundwork for allusions to Cicero, and even to think that they have found
them. But there are no explicit references either to Cicero or to Garve’s
book about him. Kant may have been drawn to the subject of ethics in part
by reading and reflecting on Garve’s book or Cicero’s classical treatise, but
it seems unlikely that the Groundwork, as we now have it, could have
grown out of a critical discussion of Garve on Cicero. The ‘‘Prodromus der
Moral’’ would seem to be a project independent of any ‘anticritique’ of
Garve that Kant could have been undertaking.
Kant was working on other topics in 1784 whose affinity with the ethical
theory presented in the Groundwork is also worth noting. For instance, he
was reviewing Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity
and writing two other short essays, Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Standpoint and Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? that reflect on human history, the social sources of the evil in human
nature, the role of autonomous reason in directing our lives, and the rational
prospects for the moral progress of the human species. But perhaps no
special explanation is needed for the fact that Kant finally got around to
addressing a subject he had been promising to write on for the past sixteen
years.
Whatever the actual history of its genesis, the Groundwork went into
press with Johann Hartknoch of Riga late in 1784. Throughout the winter,
and into the spring of 1785, Kant’s followers waited impatiently for its
appearance (Ak 4:628). Apparently the first copies were available on April
7. A second edition, altered in a number of passages throughout (but never
very greatly in any of them), appeared in 1786. This second edition went
through six more reprintings during Kant’s lifetime.
Kant seems always to have treated the Groundwork as a successful laying
of the ground for the ethical theory presented in his later writings. But clearly
he soon came to regard it as not providing a complete or wholly clear presentation even of the foundations of his system, for only three years later he
wrote a Critique of Practical Reason (1788) with the aim of clarifying those
foundations, correcting misunderstandings, and answering criticisms of his
moral philosophy that had come from readers of the Groundwork. It is a
matter of controversy how far what is said in the second Critique involves
revisions of what Kant said in the Groundwork, but many scholars think
that Kant meant to supplant the argument of the Third Section, where the
Groundwork establishes freedom of the will and relates freedom to the moral
law. In the following decade Kant wrote a number of essays and treatises on
topics involving the application of his moral philosophy to politics, history,
Editor’s Preface
xi
international relations, education, and religion. But it was only after he had
retired from university teaching, and as he began to realize that his mental
powers were beginning to fail him, that he finally assembled from the notes
and drafts of many years a work he called the Metaphysics of Morals, which
was published as one of his very last works.
Kant’s essays and treatises of the 1790s, and especially the Metaphysics
of Morals (1798), give us explicit accounts of many matters on which
readers of the Groundwork customarily try to deduce the ‘‘Kantian view’’
(by triangulation, as it were) from what he says in this little foundational
treatise. Many doctrines standardly attributed to Kant on the basis of these
triangulations—on topics such as the nature of moral motivation, the relation between reason and feeling in human action, the structure of everyday
moral reasoning, and the nature of the will’s freedom—do not harmonize
very well with what Kant actually says in the Metaphysics of Morals,
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, or other later works. This
discrepancy strongly suggests that the Groundwork does not give us Kant’s
final word on everything, and implies that where the Groundwork itself is
not entirely explicit, it ought perhaps to be interpreted (often very differently from the customary ways of interpreting it) in light of his other,
later, more explicit writings. But so influential has the Groundwork been, in
comparison with his other ethical writings, that Kant will perhaps always be
burdened with what the long tradition of moral philosophers have read of
(and sometimes read into) what he said in his first foundational text on
moral philosophy.
The Groundwork is unquestionably the starting point not only for any
study of Kant’s moral theory, but for any attempt to understand, develop, or
criticize any of the wide variety of ‘‘Kantian’’ ideas that have exercised
such a powerful influence on people’s thinking about morality, politics, and
religion in the centuries since this little book was first published. The translator and editor of this volume, as well as the writers of the four essays that
follow the text, hope they have presented Kant’s Groundwork in a way that
will further its ongoing appropriation by everyone who thinks about the
fundamental issues raised in it.
A Note on the Translation
Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten has had many English translations. The most estimable are those by Thomas K. Abbott (1883), H. J.
Paton (1948), Lewis White Beck (1949, revised several times, most notably
in 1959 and 1990), and Mary J. Gregor (1996). Yet I have found even these
fine translations unsatisfying at certain points because, in order to provide a
smoother English reading, they are too often content to remain at a distance
from what Kant actually said, and because they sometimes commit themselves too much to one possible interpretation where the original text is
tantalizingly ambiguous. Also, over the years I have come to be aware that
some of their words and phrases, even some that now echo in the ears of us
who have for many years been reading the Groundwork in translation, are
not the very best choices to translate precisely what Kant was saying.
In the present translation my aim has been to place the English reader, as
far as possible, in the same interpretive position as the German reader of the
original. Doing so has dictated taking pains to achieve accuracy and literalness in the translation, as far as this can be made consistent with intelligibility. It has also led to the attempt to preserve, as far as possible, a
consistency in terminology, not only with technical terms but even with
nontechnical ones. Where variations in meaning or context require the
same term to be translated in different ways, a numbered footnote informs
the reader of what is going on. (The unnumbered footnotes are Kant’s own.)
Kant’s paragraphing and even sentence structure have been respected, because Kant’s sentences often constitute units of argument, and modifying
them for the sake of more graceful English prose often makes the argument
harder to comprehend. Further, since my aim has been to put the English
reader in the same interpretive position as the German reader of the original, I have not attempted to make the translation clearer or more elegant
than Kant’s German is; in fact, where Kant’s writing is obscure or awkward,
I have tried to reproduce the same murkiness and cumbersomeness in English that the German reader would encounter.
For these reasons, some will perhaps find this translation less smooth
xiv
A Note on the Translation
and readable in places than the existing ones. Yet greater literalness and
transparency in a translation can often be as clarifying as confusing, as
much an invitation to ponder the meaning of the text as an obstacle to
understanding it. In such cases, the increased difficulty is, I believe, more
than compensated for by greater consistency, accuracy, and precision. I am
translating for those who want to know, insofar as they can know it from an
English translation, exactly what Kant said, so that they can have an accurate basis for their own thinking, exegetical and critical, about what Kant
said. That sort of person will not be looking for easy reading.
The priorities in translating a text must obviously depend on the nature
and purpose of the text itself. Poetry should probably be translated only by
poets; philosophy certainly needs to be translated by philosophers. What
matters in a philosophical text is almost exclusively what it means. What a
philosophical text means is constituted by the range of possible alternative
constructions that a reader’s philosophical imagination can justifiably put
on the words in which the text expresses its questions, doctrines, and arguments. A translation succeeds, therefore, to the extent that it provides a
reliable basis for this work of imagination, neither constraining the reader
to adopt the translator’s own preferred imaginings nor suggesting possible
meanings that the original text cannot bear. Faithfulness to the precise
wording of the text is one way of achieving this; another is the use of a
consistent terminology, even if the reader must adjust slightly to an English
idiolect needed to convey the thoughts Kant expressed in German.
To a philosophical mind, the meaning of the text, taken in this sense,
matters incomparably more than the smoothness of the prose; difficult prose
is even an advantage if it provokes the kind of questioning, or even the
bewilderment, that leads to fruitful philosophical reflections that are also
really about what Kant was saying. To such a mind, in fact, there is something intellectually offensive about a translation that merely gestures in the
direction of what Kant said, leaving it to the common sense of readers (that
is, to the philosophical prejudices that a great historical text should help
them to unlearn) not merely to resolve the ambiguities, but even to determine where they are. Likewise, there is even something aesthetically repugnant about a translation whose smoothness of style glosses over philosophical difficulties for the sake of achieving a facility of comprehension or a
rhetorical elegance that were not in the original text.
Abbott’s translations of Kant’s foundational writings on ethics were
remarkable for their time because Abbott attempted accuracy when other
translators of philosophical works were often content with highly interpretive paraphrases, or sought to interpose their own idiosyncratic readings of
A Note on the Translation
xv
a text between it and the English reader. Paton, Beck and Gregor are superior to the degree that they represent increasing attentiveness to what the
text says. Such a trend seems healthy or even inevitable. The more carefully
a text is studied, the more closely and subtly it will be read, and the more
sensitive its readers will become to the need for translations that reproduce
as far as possible precisely the same interpretive situation as that confronted
by a reader of the original. Once a translation is available that achieves this
to a higher degree, philosophical readers will adjust to the inconveniences
they must incur in order to obtain the advantage. Readers who want to think
hard about what the text says will not be content with something less
accurate just because it is easier to read.
Another direct incitement to do a new translation of the Groundwork at
this time was the availability of the new edition of the German text, published by Bernd Kraft and Dieter Schönecker in Felix Meiner Verlag’s
Philosophische Bibliothek series. This text of the Grundlegung was used as
the basis for the present translation. One of the special virtues of the new
Meiner Verlag edition is its attention to variations between the two earliest
versions of the text, the first published in 1785, the second a year later. The
edition usually follows the 1786 version, but notes inform the reader of the
differences. The present translation does likewise wherever textual differences make a difference in translation (which they usually do). In a few
places I have also followed the editors of the new text in making textual
emendations where the sense seems to require it. But I have done this only
reluctantly (and less often than the editors of the original text did); wherever emendations are made, of course, a numbered footnote informs the
reader; in some cases, a note suggests a possible emendation, and what it
would have meant in the translation, but without actually adopting it.
This translation has benefited greatly from careful comments by, and
long discussions with, Dieter Schönecker. His care, precision, and linguistic expertise and his intimate knowledge of the text of the Grundlegung
saved me from many errors and led to many improvements in the translation. Schönecker and Kraft also made available to me a draft of their editorial notes; I tried to reciprocate this favor by providing them with some
informational notes they did not yet have. Also helpful were textual corrections and thoughtful stylistic suggestions made by Derek Parfit. In identifying Kant’s references to classical philosophy and literature, I also benefited
from the expertise, erudition, and generosity of Tad Brennan, John Cooper,
and Elizabeth Tylawsky.
Abbreviations
Like this translation of the Groundwork, most writings of Kant available in
English provide marginal volume: page numbers from the definitive German edition (Ak). In the footnotes to this text of the Groundwork, the
writings of Kant are cited by title in English and by Ak volume:page number. In the essays, they are cited by abbreviations listed here.
Ak
Ca
G
KrV
KpV
MA
MS
R
VA
VE
Immanuel Kants Schriften. Ausgabe der königlich preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902–)
Cambridge Edition of the Writings of Immanuel Kant (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992–)
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak 4
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, 1787), cited by A/B pagination
Critique of Pure Reason, Ca
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5
Critique of Practical Reason, Ca Practical Philosophy
Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), Ak 8
Conjectural Beginning of Human History, Ca Anthropology, History and Education
Metaphysik der Sitten (1797–1798), Ak 6
Metaphysics of Morals, Ca Practical Philosophy
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793–1794),
Ak 6
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Ca Religion and
Rational Theology
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Ak 7
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, Ca Anthropology,
History and Education
Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, Ak 25
Vorlesungen über Ethik, Ak 27
Lectures on Ethics, Ca Lectures on Ethics
xviii
VL
WA
Abbreviations
Vorlesungen über Logik, Ak 9, 24
Lectures on Logic, Ca Lectures on Logic
Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (1784), Ak 8
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Ca Practical
Philosophy
Formulations of the Moral Law
Kant formulates the moral law in three principal ways. The first and third of
these have variants which are intended to bring the law closer to intuition
and make it easier to apply. These five principal formulations of the moral
law are abbreviated as follows.
First formula:
FUL The Formula of Universal Law: ‘‘Act only in accordance with that
maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become
a universal law’’ (G 4:421; cf. G 4:402)
with its variant
FLN The Formula of the Law of Nature: ‘‘So act as if the maxim of your
action were to become through your will a universal law of nature’’ (G 4:421; cf. G 4:436)
Second formula:
FH
The Formula of Humanity as End in Itself: ‘‘Act so that you use
humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every
other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means’’
(G 4:429; cf. G 4:436)
Third formula:
FA
Formula of Autonomy: ‘‘the idea of the will of every rational being
as a will giving universal law’’ (G 4:431; cf. G 4:432) or ‘‘Not to
choose otherwise than so that the maxims of one’s choice are at
the same time comprehended with it in the same volition as universal law’’ (G 4:440; cf. G 4:432, 434, 438)
with its variant,
FRE The Formula of the Realm of Ends: ‘‘Act in accordance with
maxims of a universally legislative member for a merely possible
realm of ends’’ (G 4:439; cf. G 4:433, 437, 438)
Groundwork
for
the Metaphysics of Morals
[Ak ∂:≥∫∑]
Preface
Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics,
and logic.1 This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing and
one cannot improve upon it, except only by adding its principle, in order in
this way partly to secure its completeness and partly to be able to determine
correctly the necessary subdivisions.
All rational cognition is either material, and considers some object, or
formal, and concerns itself merely with the form of the understanding and
of reason itself and the universal rules of thinking in general, without
distinction among objects.2 Formal philosophy is called logic, but material
philosophy, which has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which
they are subjected, is once again twofold. For these laws are either laws of
nature or of freedom. The science of the first is called physics, and that of
the other is ethics; the former is also named ‘doctrine of nature’, the latter
‘doctrine of morals’.
Logic can have no empirical part, i.e., a part such that the universal and
necessary laws of thinking rest on grounds that are taken from experience;
for otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or
reason which is valid for all thinking and must be demonstrated. By contrast, natural and moral philosophy can each have their empirical part,
because the former must determine its laws of nature as an object of experience, the latter must determine the laws for the will of the human being
insofar as he is affected by nature—the first as laws in accordance with
which everything happens, the second as those in accordance with which
everything ought to happen, but also reckoning with the conditions under
which it often does not happen.
One can call all philosophy, insofar as it is based on grounds of experi1. According to Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers
7.39, this division was first devised by Zeno of Citium (335–265 b.c.) and was characteristic of the Stoics. See, e.g., Seneca, Epistles 89.9; Cicero, On Ends 4.4.
2. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, A50–55/B74–79.
[Ak ∂:≥∫π]
[Ak 4:388]
4
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
ence, empirical, but that which puts forth its doctrines solely from principles a priori, pure philosophy. The latter, when it is merely formal, is called
logic; but if it is limited to determinate objects of the understanding, then3 it
is called metaphysics.
In such a wise there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysics, the idea of
a metaphysics of nature and of a metaphysics of morals. Physics will thus
have its empirical but also a rational part; and ethics likewise; although here
the empirical part in particular could be called practical anthropology, but
the rational part could properly be called morals.4
All trades, handicrafts, and arts have gained through the division of
labor, since, namely, one person does not do everything, but rather each
limits himself to a certain labor which distinguishes itself markedly from
others by its manner of treatment, in order to be able to perform it in the
greatest perfection and with more facility. Where labors are not so distinguished and divided, where each is a jack-of-all-trades, there the trades still
remain in the greatest barbarism. But it might be a not unworthy object of
consideration to ask whether pure philosophy in all its parts does not require
each its particular man, and whether it would not stand better with the
learned trade as a whole if those who, catering to the taste of the public, are
accustomed to sell the empirical along with the rational, mixed in all sorts
of proportions5 unknown even to themselves—calling themselves ‘independent thinkers’,6 and those who prepare the merely rational part ‘quibblers’7 —if they were warned not to carry on simultaneously two enterprises that are very different in their mode of treatment, each of which
perhaps requires a particular talent, and the combination of which in a
single person produces only bunglers: thus I here ask only whether the
nature of the science does not require the empirical part always to be
carefully separated from the rational, placing ahead of a genuine (empirical) physics a metaphysics of nature, and ahead of practical anthropology a
metaphysics of morals, which must be carefully cleansed of everything
3. 1785: ‘‘understanding, is called’’
4. Kant later includes ‘‘principles of application’’ drawn from ‘‘the particular nature of
human beings’’ within ‘‘metaphysics of morals’’ itself, leaving ‘‘practical anthropology’’
to deal ‘‘only with the subjective conditions in human nature that hinder people or help
them in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals’’ (Metaphysics of Morals, Ak
6:217).
5. Verhältnisse
6. Selbstdenker
7. Grübler
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
5
empirical, in order to know how much pure reason could achieve in both
cases; and from these sources pure reason itself creates its teachings a
priori, whether the latter enterprise be carried on by all teachers of morals
(whose name is legion) or only by some who feel they have a calling for it.
Since my aim here is properly directed to moral philosophy, I limit the
proposed question only to this: whether one is not of the opinion that it is of
the utmost necessity to work out once a pure moral philosophy which is
fully cleansed of everything that might be in any way empirical and belong
to anthropology; for that there must be such is self-evident from the common idea of duty and of moral laws. Everyone must admit that a law, if it is
to be valid morally, i.e., as the ground of an obligation, has to carry absolute
necessity with it; that the command ‘You ought not to lie’ is valid not
merely for human beings, as though other rational beings did not have to
heed it; and likewise all the other genuinely moral laws; hence that the
ground of obligation here is to be sought not in the nature of the human
being or the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but a priori
solely in concepts of pure reason, and that every other precept grounded on
principles of mere experience, and even a precept that is universal in a
certain aspect, insofar as it is supported in the smallest part on empirical
grounds, perhaps only as to its motive, can be called a practical rule, but
never a moral law.
Thus not only are moral laws together with their principles essentially
distinguished among all practical cognition from everything else in which
there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests entirely on its
pure part, and when applied to the human being it borrows not the least bit
from knowledge about him (anthropology), but it gives him as a rational
being laws a priori, which to be sure require a power of judgment sharpened through experience, partly to distinguish in which cases they have
their application, and partly to obtain access for them to the will of the
human being and emphasis for their fulfillment, since he,8 as affected with
so many inclinations, is susceptible to the idea of a pure practical reason,
but is not so easily capable of making it effective in concreto in his course of
life.
Thus a metaphysics of morals is indispensably necessary not merely
from a motive of speculation, in order to investigate the source of the
practical principles lying a priori in our reason, but also because morals
themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as that guiding
8. Kant’s text reads diese, which would be translated ‘‘the latter’’ and refer to ‘‘fulfillment’; editors suggest amending it to dieser, which would refer to ‘the human being’.
[Ak 4: 389]
[Ak 4:390]
6
[Ak 4:391]
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
thread and supreme norm of their correct judgment is lacking. For as to
what is to be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law,
but it must also happen for the sake of this law; otherwise, that conformity is
only contingent and precarious, because the unmoral ground will now and
then produce lawful actions, but more often actions contrary to the law. But
now the moral law in its purity and genuineness (which is precisely what
most matters in the practical) is to be sought nowhere else than in a pure
philosophy; hence this (metaphysics) must go first, and without it there
can be n
