Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant 1785
This philosophical essay asks what makes an action morally right, rather than merely useful or pleasing. A shopkeeper who charges fair prices helps distinguish acting from duty from acting for personal gain.
103 pages 2h reading time
- One of the most important and widely read works on right and wrong in Western philosophy.
- Argues that an action has true moral worth only when it is done because it is right, not because of the results it brings or the feelings behind it.
- Proposes a single test for any action: act only in a way you could want everyone to act, and always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as tools.
- Founded one of the main schools of moral thought, now called duty-based ethics, which is still taught alongside its chief rival, the view that judges actions by their results.
- Its idea that every person has a dignity that must be respected helped shape modern thinking about human rights and is still cited in debates about medicine, law, and consent.
Began as a reply
Kant's friends reported he was writing an answer to Christian Garve's popular edition of Cicero's book on duties.
Meant as groundwork only
Kant planned it as a short first step, and the full moral system he promised appeared twelve years later.
A slim, quick book
It runs to only about a hundred pages, far shorter than the huge works Kant published around it.
Critics called it nothing new
One early critic said Kant offered only "a new formula," and Kant replied that this was exactly the point.
Translated from German by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott