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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

H. J. Paton: “In spite of its horrifying title Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is one of the small books which are truly great: it has exercised on human thought an influence almost ludicrously disproportionate to its size.�


Morality is a priori

For Kant, universality and necessity are the hallmarks of the a priori. Morality commands universally (all rational beings, not just all humans) and necessarily (no exceptions, regardless of circumstance). Therefore, ....


A second reason (not given by Kant) for regarding moral knowledge as independent of experience: the logical gulf between descriptive and prescriptive statements, aka Hume's “is/ought� problem. Since it is impossible to deduce how we ought to behave from observations of our actual behavior, our knowledge of moral principles could not have arisen......

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Approximate Word Count: 1426
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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