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What makes an action morally right? In this short book Kant argues that it is not the consequences, nor our feelings, but the principle on which we act. A…
What makes an action morally right? In this short book Kant argues that it is not the consequences, nor our feelings, but the principle on which we act. A good will is the only thing good without qualification, and the supreme law of morality is the categorical imperative: act only on a rule that you could will to become a universal law, and treat humanity, in yourself and in others, always as an end and never merely as a means. He tests it on examples such as a man who borrows money with a promise he knows he cannot keep.
Context and significance
Published in 1785 as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and translated here by T. K. Abbott as Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, it is the most accessible of Immanuel Kant's major works and remains central to every debate about human dignity and rights. Read also his Perpetual Peace, and see his life.
About the author
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) spent his whole life in and around Königsberg in East Prussia, where he taught at the university for decades and kept such regular habits that, according to legend, neighbours set their clocks by his afternoon walk. He was fifty-seven when he published the Critique of Pure Reason, which changed philosophy.
Answering David Hume, who he said woke him from his dogmatic slumber, Kant asked what we can know, what we ought to do and what we may hope, and gave the world the categorical imperative and the motto of the Enlightenment, 'Dare to know'. His short essay Perpetual Peace is his most accessible work.