Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Immanuel Kant

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Collected Works of Immanuel Kant’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Kant includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788777209

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and is known as one of the foremost thinkers of Enlightenment. He is widely recognized for his contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

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The Collected Works of

IMMANUEL KANT

VOLUME 8 OF 19

Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2016

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals’

Immanuel Kant: Parts Edition (in 19 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 720 9

Delphi Classics

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Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

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Immanuel Kant: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 8 of the Delphi Classics edition of Immanuel Kant in 19 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals from the bestselling edition of the author’s Collected Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Immanuel Kant, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Immanuel Kant or the Collected Works of Immanuel Kant in a single eBook.

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IMMANUEL KANT

IN 19 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Books

1, Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven

2, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer

3, Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World: Inaugural Dissertation 1770

4, Critique of Pure Reason

5, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science

6, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

7, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

8, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

9, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

10, Critique of Practical Reason

11, Critique of Judgement

12, Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason

13, Perpetual Peace

14, Metaphysics of Morals: The Philosophy of Law

15, Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books

16, On Education

The Criticism

17, The Criticism

The Biographies

18, Memoir of Kant by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

19, Immanuel Kant by Robert Adamson

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Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

Translated by homas Kingsmill Abbott

Also known as Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, this is the first of Kant’s mature works on moral philosophy and remains one of the most influential in the field. Kant conceives his investigation as a work of foundational ethics — one that clears the ground for future research by explaining the core concepts and principles of moral theory and showing that they are normative for rational agents. Kant aims to lay bare the fundamental principle of morality and show that it applies to us. In the text, the philosopher provides a groundbreaking argument that the rightness of an action is determined by the character of the principle that a person chooses to act upon. Kant thus stands in stark contrast to the moral sense theories and teleological moral theories that dominated moral philosophy at the time he was writing. Central to the work is the role of what Kant refers to as the categorical imperative, the concept that one must act only according to that precept which he or she would will to become a universal law.

The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is broken into a preface, followed by three sections. Kant’s argument works from common reason up to the supreme unconditional law, in order to identify its existence. He then works backwards from there to prove the relevance and weight of the moral law. The third and final section of the book is famously obscure, and it is partly because of this that Kant later, in 1788, decided to publish the Critique of Practical Reason.

The first edition’s title page

CONTENTS

PREFACE

FIRST SECTION

SECOND SECTION

THIRD SECTION

PREFACE

Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic. This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing; and the only improvement that can be made in it is to add the principle on which it is based, so that we may both satisfy ourselves of its completeness, and also be able to determine correctly the necessary subdivisions.

All rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. Formal philosophy is called logic. Material philosophy, however, has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is physics, that of the latter, ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively.

Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.

We may call all philosophy empirical, so far as it is based on grounds of experience: on the other band, that which delivers its doctrines from a priori principles alone we may call pure philosophy. When the latter is merely formal it is logic; if it is restricted to definite objects of the understanding it is metaphysic.

In this way there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysic- a metaphysic of nature and a metaphysic of morals. Physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. It is the same with Ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part.

All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labour, namely, when, instead of one man doing everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of work distinct from others in the treatment it requires, so as to be able to perform it with greater facility and in the greatest perfection. Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism. It might deserve to be considered whether pure philosophy in all its parts does not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it would not be better for the whole business of science if those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed in all sorts of proportions unknown to themselves, and who call themselves independent thinkers, giving the name of minute philosophers to those who apply themselves to the rational part only- if these, I say, were warned not to carry on two employments together which differ widely in the treatment they demand, for each of which perhaps a special talent is required, and the combination of which in one person only produces bunglers. But I only ask here whether the nature of science does not require that we should always carefully separate the empirical from the rational part, and prefix to Physics proper (or empirical physics) a metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthropology a metaphysic of morals, which must be carefully cleared of everything empirical, so that we may know how much can be accomplished by pure reason in both cases, and from what sources it draws this its a priori teaching, and that whether the latter inquiry is conducted by all moralists (whose name is legion), or only by some who feel a calling thereto.

As my concern here is with moral philosophy, I limit the question suggested to this: Whether it is not of the utmost necessity to construct a pure thing which is only empirical and which belongs to anthropology? for that such a philosophy must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty and of the moral laws. Everyone must admit that if a law is to have moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the precept, Thou shalt not lie, is not valid for men alone, as if other rational beings had no