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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profound, Inspiring, and, Of Course, Difficult, June 6, 2004
Kant's Groundwork (or Foundations) of the Metaphysics of Morals is probably the single most influential work of philosophical ethics since Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. While Kant himself considered this a sort of introduction to ethical thinking, it's come to be his most influential and widely read work on ethics. Despite its length--it's less than a hundred pages--this is a work of remarkable depth and intellectual insight.And what makes the Groundwork especially interesting is its clear statement of a distinctive Kantian vision of the nature of morality. It's not just that this work includes original and exceptionally insightful philosophizing, but that there's a vision of morality underlying the details, and it's a general conception of morality in which there is something inspiring and awesome. The absolutism, the lack of concern for consequences and for human nature, the emphasis on a sort of radical freedom, the distrust of human feeling, the emphasis on our rationality--all of these are elements of Kant's emphasis on the purity of ethics. (Later works reveal that Kant's thinking about these issues was considerably more complex, but there is something fundamental about the presentation here--even if it doesn't provide a wholly accurate account of all his thinking.) Moral action, he claims, is action in which we act for duty's sake, and acting for duty's sake requires an independence of one's actions from our ordinary concerns, from everyday motives and inclinations, from self-interest, and from nearly all human feeling. And since moral action is free action, understanding moral action in this way requires Kant to carve out a sphere of freedom in which we are the authors of our actions. It's not just that we're free of external constraints in moral action; we also need to be free of the characteristics qualities of our personalities and of the distinctive patterns of thought and feeling that constitute human nature. Nevertheless, Kant claims that the moral law is one that comes from within--though not from our contingent feelings and desires. It is instead a law that we give to ourselves as rational beings. In moral action we act in ways that express our natural as rational beings, and only as rational beings. So act morally, acting with a wholly good will, is action in which we reveal ourselves to beings deserving of the dignity that comes with being a free and rational being. Now, even though this is intended as an introduction to Kant's moral thought, this isn't an easy work. It needs to be read and re-read (and, I suppose, re-read) to be fully understood and appreciated. I've never found Kant as difficult and obscure as his reputation would suggest, but as a writer of philosophical prose he's certainly not the caliber of, say, Hume or Descartes. Still, Kant's ideas in the Groundwork, while subtle and sometimes elusive, are profound and original, and this book is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophical ethics. Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to discover the fundamental principle of morality. In the first section he attempts to derive this fundamental principle from ordinary moral thought. In particular, he attempts to derive this principle from considerations concerning what is unconditionally good. Kant claims that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will. Moreover, its goodness is not a matter of the results of acting on a good will; it is good in itself. As a matter of fact, Kant claims that the results of an action done with a good will and the aims and inclinations of the agent with the good will are morally insignificant. What, then, is it to act with a good will? It is, Kant argues, a matter of doing one's duty for duty's sake, regardless of one's feeling and the results of doing so. What is it to act from duty's sake? It is to act from principles that accord with the fundamental principle of morality. And here we get the first formulation of the fundamental principle of morality: act only on maxims that you can consistently will to be universal laws. In other words, if one is unable to will the principle of one's action to become a universal law, the action is morally impermissible. In the second section of the Groundwork Kant attempts to draw the same conclusion from some philosophical points about the nature of duty. He begins by claiming that our knowledge of our duty is a priori and based on the exercise of reason. He then argues that facts about our duties are necessary facts, and that this shows that they must be based on a categorical imperative: that is, that our duties apply to us insofar as we are rational beings, irrespective of the contingent aspects of their nature. And, Kant argues, the one categorical imperative is the fundamental principle of morality mentioned above. He then applies this principle to some examples in order to display just how it grounds our duties in particular cases. The rest of the second section is filled with lots of interesting, albeit abstruse, ideas. First, Kant attempts to ground the categorical imperative in something that is of unconditional worth. What is that something? The existence of rational beings, which, he says, is an end in itself. And this leads to a second formulation of the categorical imperative: (ii) act only in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in the person of yourself or someone else, as an end and never merely as a means. This section also includes a third formulation of the categorical imperative: (iii) act only on maxims that you could will to become universal laws legislated by your own will. This formulation encapsulates Kant's claim that we can achieve autonomy only by acting in accordance with the moral law. Conformity with the moral law does not constrain our freedom since we legislate the moral law for ourselves. The moral law is not forced on us from without; its source is to be found in our own rational nature. Indeed, it is only by acting morally that we are able to achieve genuine freedom by transcending the contingent desires and inclinations that are beyond our control. Of course, that doesn't come close to summing up the Groundwork. But it's a start.
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