Groundwork

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Overview

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, published in 1785, is a short book that tries to identify the supreme principle of morality. Kant argues that an action has moral worth only when done from duty, and that duty is expressed in the categorical imperative, a command that holds for every rational being regardless of desires. One version tells us to act only on rules we could will as universal laws; another tells us never to treat humanity merely as a means. It is the starting point of duty-based ethics and of modern ideas of human dignity.

Context

Kant, a professor at Konigsberg in Prussia, wrote after the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Enlightenment thinkers had grounded morality in feeling, as Hume and Hutcheson did, in utility, or in religious authority. Kant wanted a basis that depends on reason alone and holds for all rational beings. The Groundwork prepares for his later Critique of Practical Reason and Metaphysics of Morals.