Notes on Kant

Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

by Immanuel Kant

“....Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless.”   

― Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

To determine(develop) a foundation for a Metaphysics of Morals. Kant proposes that the proper foundation for a metaphysics of morals must be a critical examination of pure practical reason. This is because Moral Laws and their principles are different from practical cognition based on the difference between analytical and empirical thought. Moral philosophy rests on a priori (pure) laws.
Such laws require a power of judgment based on experience.

A metaphysics of such morals is necessary to avoid corruption: i.e. the moral good must not only conform to the moral law but it must also be done for the sake of that law. The metaphysics of morals must investigate the idea and principles of a possible “pure will” - not the actions of human volition.

The method of the work should be an analytical approach that progresses from ordinary knowledge to a supreme principle followed by an analysis and examination of this principle.


In spite of the logic of Kant's argument is it capable of being put into actual practice?
Or, in other words, can there be adherence to a moral law that is done solely for the sake of that law.