Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Immanuel Kant

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.