Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

A Commentary

Dieter Schönecker, Allen W. Wood

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780674430136
• eBook ISBN: 9780674967366
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia etica e morale

A defining work of moral philosophy, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals has been influential to an extent far beyond what its modest length (roughly 75 pages) might suggest. It is also a famously difficult work, concerned with propounding universal principles rather than answering practical questions. As even professional philosophers will admit, first-time readers are not alone in finding some of its arguments perplexing.

Offering an introduction that is accessible to students and relevant to specialized scholars, Dieter Schönecker and Allen Wood make luminously clear the ways the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals forms the basis of our modern moral outlook: that all human beings have equal dignity as ends in themselves; that every rational being is a self-governing agent whose morality freely derives from his or her own will; and that all rational beings constitute an ideal community, bound only by the moral laws they have agreed upon. Schönecker and Wood explain key Kantian concepts of duty, the good will, and moral worth, as well as the propositions Kant uses to derive his conception of the moral law. How the law relates to freedom, and the significance of the free will within Kant's overall philosophy are rigorously interrogated. Where differing interpretations of Kant's claims are possible, the authors provide alternative options, giving arguments for each. This critical introduction will help readers of the Groundwork gain an informed understanding of Kant's challenging but central philosophical work.

1

Kant’s Preface

The Metaphysics of Morals and the Strategy of the Groundwork

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The first part (1.1) of this chapter examines the central task and methodology of the Groundwork and the nature of the ‘transitions’ between the different sections of Kant’s text. The second part (1.2) investigates Kant’s concept and project of a ‘metaphysics of morals.’ The final part (1.3) summarizes the basic points and conclusions of our analysis. The discussion in this chapter may appear rather dry and abstract. However, it should afford a helpful view of the basic structure of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (GMS),¹ allowing us to concentrate in what follows on the fundamental arguments in Kant’s text.

1.1 The Task, Method, and Transitions of the Groundwork

Kant did not begin his career as a moral philosopher. His concern with philosophy initially sprang from his specific interest in the natural sciences, and although he did engage repeatedly with questions of ethics and aesthetics during the 1760s and the 1770s, we can still probably say that it was the field of theoretical philosophy that constituted the basic focus of his philosophical work until the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, published in 1785, is the first work that Kant dedicated exclusively to questions of moral philosophy. It was succeeded by further significant and substantial contributions to this field, such as the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797–1798), and by a series of shorter but exceedingly important writings that also belong to practical philosophy.²

But even if Kant’s first publications were principally concerned with issues of theoretical philosophy, it is also clear that ethical questions occupied him from early on. It was in his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, completed in 1762 and published in 1764, that Kant first openly engaged with fundamental moral questions; this text already effectively involves the distinction between ‘hypothetical’ and ‘categorical’ imperatives.³ And in Kant’s correspondence from the middle of the 1760s on we find repeated references to what he calls a ‘metaphysics of morals.’ In his letter to Herder of 9 May 1768 Kant even says, “I hope to be finished with this work this year” (AA 10:74). About two years later Kant repeats his intentions in this regard. And it is clear in this connection that Kant already associates the envisaged ‘metaphysics of morals’ with an idea that he will never subsequently relinquish: that a metaphysics of morals involves an a priori ethics. Thus on 2 September 1770 he tells Johann Heinrich Lambert that he has “resolved to put in order and complete my investigations of pure moral philosophy, in which no empirical principles are to be found, as it were the Metaphysics of Morals” (AA 10:97; o.e. instead of Kant’s here). But if Kant had originally hoped to combine his theoretical and practical philosophy in a single work—one that he titles ‘The Limits of Sensibility and Reason’ in his letter to Marcus Herz of 21 February 1772—he soon abandoned this plan. In fact, over the next few years we hear nothing more from Kant about the idea of this ‘metaphysics of morals.’⁴

In his remarks at the beginning of the Preface (387–388), which are principally concerned with the ‘architectonic’ character of philosophy, Kant describes ‘ethics’ (die Ethik) as the science of the objects and laws of freedom. As a form of pure or a priori philosophy, this ethics is also described as a ‘metaphysics of morals.’ We shall examine the notion of ‘metaphysics’ and ‘the a priori’ that is involved in Kant’s ethics in some detail later, but in order to avoid unnecessary confusion, we should already clearly note that Kant employs the expression ‘metaphysics of morals’ in different ways within the text of GMS. In the most general sense, Kant understands it to signify that part of ethics that attempts to set out and to ground moral laws independently of experience (i.e., a priori). The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, as the name suggests, lays the ground or foundation (Grundlegung) of this project. But since GMS itself already proceeds in an a priori manner and must even answer the “principal question” (392:8) of the whole enterprise, the text itself is also already a metaphysics of morals. Kant also announces a ‘metaphysics of morals’ that he intends to provide “someday” (391:16) and whose task will be to present a systematic and complete “division of duties” (421:31). And Kant describes this as a “future metaphysics of morals” (421:32).⁵ In addition, we should note that Kant also bestowed the title ‘metaphysics of morals’ on that part of GMS to which he provides a transition in the second section of his text and beyond which in turn he moves in the third section. The concept of a ‘metaphysics of morals’ therefore has a threefold meaning: first, it is a general concept that captures Kant’s whole enterprise of a priori ethics, to which GMS also belongs (MS₁); second, it also describes Kant’s ‘future’ doctrine of right and virtue that is yet to be written (MS₂); third, it designates one specific part of GMS itself (MS₃).⁶

The Task of GMS

Kant’s project of a ‘metaphysics of morals’ therefore falls into two parts: the ‘future’ metaphysics of morals (the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue proper: MS₂) and the ‘foundational’ part: GMS itself. If we ignore Kant’s remarks regarding the method of GMS for the moment, then the basic structure of the work, at least, is easily grasped: GMS I and II are concerned with “the search” (392:3) for the categorical imperative (henceforth often abbreviated CI), while GMS III is directed toward the “establishment” (392:4) of the categorical imperative as the supreme principle of morality.

What is the significance of this twofold division of GMS? In the first two sections of GMS Kant concentrates on analyzing the meaning of fundamental ethical concepts. What does it mean to call something ‘good’? What are we to understand by ‘the practical faculty of reason’? What does it mean for something to function as a ‘moral law’ in the first place? How can we actually find ethically acceptable principles? It is with questions such as these that GMS I and II are essentially concerned. Kant defines this task as “the mere analysis of the concepts of morality” (440:29; o.e.).⁷ Kant repeatedly emphasizes that, at least in the first instance, he is concerned simply with the meaning or ‘significance’ of our fundamental moral concepts. As he puts it himself: “Thus we have established at least this much: that if duty is a concept that is to contain significance and actual legislation for our actions, then this duty could be expressed only in categorical imperatives, but by no means in hypothetical ones” (425:1; o.e.); at this point we may “leave unsettled whether in general what one calls ‘duty’ is an empty concept” (421:11; o.e.) as long as we can at “least indicate what we are thinking in the concept of duty, and what this concept means” (421:12; o.e.). This analysis of our concepts is thus not concerned with whether in fact there are any moral laws. It is concerned merely with what can properly be understood as the content of moral and ethical thought (namely, categorical imperatives). But at this stage it is by no means excluded that morality as a whole might simply turn out to be “a chimerical idea without truth” (445:6) or a mere “fiction of the mind” (445:8).⁸

It is only in GMS III that Kant addresses the question of the truth and reality of the concepts that have been analyzed in GMS I and II and attempts the ‘establishment’ of the CI. But these two parts of the text are not really separate from each other after all. For the principal result of the ‘search’ for the supreme principle of morality is the recognition that moral action is action for the sake of morality. Kant’s fundamental idea is that ethics and morality are essentially concerned with what we ought to do, and that when it comes to doing what is morally right, we should choose to do it, if need be, quite independently of any contingent interests or inclinations that might be presupposed on our part. The faculty or capacity that allows us to act independently of our subjective interests is what Kant calls pure practical reason. Kant believes that there is such a faculty, and he thereby directly challenges a tradition of thought for which the idea of rational action without any reference to presupposed interests is inconceivable and unintelligible. To this day the name of Kant basically stands for one (rationalistic) tradition, and that of David Hume for the alternative (empiricist) tradition that Kant specifically criticizes in GMS.⁹ If it is essential to the very meaning of ‘morality’ that it involves action independently of subjective interests, then Kant must also show that such action is possible in the first place, or, in other words, that the faculty of pure practical reason actually exists, or, in other words again, that we are free. Kant shows this only in GMS III (although, as we shall see, he prepares the way for it in GMS II). But even if Kant is able to show that we can in fact act morally (i.e., without regard to our desires or inclinations), he has not yet shown us that or why we ought to act morally. This is also the task of GMS III. Indeed, this is the principal task of what Kant calls the “deduction” (454:21) of the categorical imperative.

GMS thus has two parts: it analyzes and it grounds the categorical imperative. GMS as a whole is in turn the first part of the metaphysics of morals (MS₁) and answers the ‘principal question’ of the latter. The second part of this metaphysics of morals is then “the application of the same principle to the entire system” (392:8), namely, the systematic derivation of the duties of right and the duties of virtue from this highest moral principle.

The Method of GMS

There is no doubt about the twofold division of GMS, but it is difficult to reconcile this actual division with Kant’s own methodological remarks, which are found in two specific places in GMS. At the end of the Preface, Kant tells us that he has chosen a “method” (392:17) that he believes is “the one best suited if one wants to take the way analytically from common cognition to the determination of its supreme principle and then, in turn, synthetically from the testing of this principle and its sources back to common cognition, in which its use is encountered” (392:18). And at the end of the second section, Kant tells us that GMS I/II have been “merely analytical” (445:8), and that we cannot venture on “a possible synthetic use of pure practical reason” (445:11) without a critique of the faculty of pure practical reason that is to be accomplished in GMS III. Kant thus seems to distinguish, methodologically speaking, between an ‘analytical’ and a ‘synthetic’ part of GMS, and this, in turn, would seem to correspond to the actual distinction between the conceptual-analytical task that is undertaken in GMS I/II and the task of grounding that is addressed in GMS III.

Nonetheless, the matter is not so simple. In the Prolegomena (1783) Kant stresses that the analytical method is “something quite different from an aggregate of analytic propositions” (PM:276, footnote; o.e.).¹⁰ Since the conceptual-analytical part of GMS is ultimately nothing but such ‘an aggregate of analytic propositions,’ the ‘analysis of concepts’ that is conducted in GMS I/II must be ‘quite different’ from the analytical method (and so too the synthetic method must be ‘quite different’ from the synthetic treatment of concepts in GMS III). But that implies that the actual twofold division of GMS is not meant to be understood in the same way as the twofold distinction of method that is described in the Prolegomena. In that case, Kant’s remarks on method, and especially his use of the term “method” (392:17), should not be interpreted in the light of the Prolegomena either. So when Kant deploys the predicates ‘analytical’ and ‘synthetic’ in GMS, he is not referring to the analytical or synthetic method; rather, he is thereby referring to the conceptual-analytical part, namely, GMS I/II (the ‘analysis of concepts’), and to the part concerned with grounding the central concepts, namely, GMS III (the ‘deduction’). And the expression ‘method’ also has a quite different significance here. Kant is thereby referring to the transitions that are specifically accomplished in the three sections of GMS. Kant’s ‘method’ in this work, therefore, consists in taking what he calls “common rational moral cognition” (392:23) as a point of departure and going on to distinguish different levels of rational moral cognition proper—the first drawn from ordinary human cognition (or ‘common sense’), the second from a philosophical presentation of rational moral cognition. It is in the context of these different levels that Kant provides both a conceptual analysis and a deduction of the relevant moral concepts.¹¹

The Relationship among the Transitions in the Text

Kant begins the Groundwork with a discussion of our ‘common rational moral cognition.’ Before examining this in more detail, we should initially clarify the relationship among the various transitions in the text. It should be clear that the first “transition from common rational moral cognition to philosophical rational moral cognition” (392:23) is actually accomplished in GMS I. It is quite true that right at the end of GMS I Kant tells us that we can now “step into the field of practical philosophy” (405:23) and “seek help in philosophy” (405:32). But that is certainly not meant to suggest that we are not already engaged with ‘philosophical rational moral cognition’ in GMS I itself.¹² In the first place, GMS I is specifically titled ‘Transition from Common Rational Moral Cognition to Philosophical Rational Moral Cognition,’ and why would Kant describe this section in such terms if the transition in question were not in fact accomplished here? In the second place, Kant subsequently tells u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Kant’s Preface: The Metaphysics of Morals and the Strategy of the Groundwork
• 2. Section I of the Groundwork: The Good Will, Duty, and the Derivation of the Categorical Imperative
• 3. Section II of the Groundwork: Practical Reason, Imperatives, and Kant’s Formulas
• 4. Section III of the Groundwork: The Deduction of the Categorical Imperative
• 5. Bibliography
• Index