Kant Immanuel - Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

IMMANUEL KANT

Edited and translated by Allen W. Wood

With an updated translation, introduction, and notes

Yale
UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Haven & London

First published by Yale University Press in 2002 as a volume in the Rethinking the Western Tradition series. This edition, with an updated translation, introduction, and notes, published by Yale University Press in 2018.

Copyright 2002, 2018 by Yale University.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952054

ISBN 978-0-300-22743-7 (paper : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Rega

once again and always

Contents

Abbreviations

Citations of Kants Writings

Formulas 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 will be abbreviated as follows.

First formula:

Second formula:

Third formula:

Translators Introduction

Kants little book of 1785 is among the most significant texts in the history of ethics. For over two centuries it has been a standard of referencesometimes a model to be developed and expanded on, sometimes a target of criticism, often something of both. It has served these purposes for 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 twentieth-century philosophers in both the continental and the Anglophone traditions, and for moral philosophers of all persuasions right down to the present day.

The depth and originality of the ideas contained in the Groundwork no doubt merit this influence. It is a famous book, but also a difficult and even obscure book, which is hard to understand and easy to misunderstand. (I am not kidding when I tell classes I teach that I did not understand it at all the first fifty times I read it.) Much of the