This work, known as the Grundlegung, is
sometimes translated as "The Groundwork" or "The
Foundation."
(In the following, I refer to the page numbers using the “Ak.” prefix (short for “
First Section
1. Here are some bits of vocabulary:
2. What is Kant’s reason for taking happiness to be morally irrelevant? (Note that this is a major change from the theories of Aristotle, Bentham, and Mill.)
3. Kant has a particularly severe sentence at Ak. 398, in the sentence concluding “—then for the first time his action has genuine moral worth.” Does he really mean this? Look for evidence one way or the other as you read through the rest of the section, and the rest of the work.
4. We often think of duty and love as different motivations for any given action. Kant argues that the sort of love which differs from duty is morally irrelevant (what’s his reasoning?), and that therefore the only sense of love which is morally relevant is the sense in which one could think of duty as love (e.g., thinking of a dutiful neighbor as being a loving neighbor).
5. In explaining what has come to be called the universalizability formulation (or universal law formulation) of the moral (that is, categorical) imperative, Kant uses the example of making a deceitful promise. What exactly are the steps in his account of what makes making a deceitful promise wrong?
6. Kant claims that people need not understand his views in order to engage in actions of positive moral worth. What, then, is his point in writing this treatise? What is the point, according to him, of ethical theorizing?
Second Section
1. This section of the Grounding is the longest of the three, the most difficult, and as luck would have it, the most important and influential. It is accordingly imperative (pun!) to invest the best your mind has to offer in this section.
2. Kant distinguishes among three types of commands: technical (imperatives of skill), pragmatic (imperatives of prudence), and moral (what is of interest to Kant here). The first two bind conditionally. That is, they bind on someone only if that person has the relevant inclinations. The (technical) command to take a certain medication pertains to you only if you have the relevant medical disorder and have the inclination to be alleviated from that disorder. The (pragmatic) command to develop friendships is still binding on you conditional on the hypothesis that you want to be happy, and so is not binding in itself.
Kant indicates the conditionality of these two sorts of imperatives by calling them "hypothetical imperatives." Kant thinks that the moral imperative binds unconditionally, and accordingly calls it the "categorical imperative."
But by the time Kant has laid this out (Ak. 417), he has yet to tell us what exactly the categorical imperative says to do.
While Kant thinks that there are many hypothetical imperatives (an infinity of them, presumably), he holds that there is exactly ONE categorical imperative. All other moral commands are derived from this one categorical imperative.
3. In this section, Kant gives four different formulations of the categorical imperative. He takes them to be synonymous formulations. (A surprising claim in itself, given how different the formulations sound, but I won’t go into that here.) Your editor flags each of the formulations with a footnote, and you need to understand what each of the formulations is saying.
4. At Ak . 421-424, Kant uses the terms "perfect duties" and "imperfect duties."
Perfect duties are duties which can be perfectly satisfied, like the duty not to steal, or not to murder. Imperfect duties are, on the contrary, always imperfectly satisfied, like the duty to help others. There is always more one could do along the lines of satisfying these duties. There accordingly must be some discretion involved in the satisfaction of the imperfect duties in a way that is not involved for the perfect duties. I must select whom to help and whom not to help, but there are no such moral options when it comes to whom to make a false promise to.
This is not to say that Kant thinks that imperfect duties are optional. No, they are hard and fast duties, not mere moral afterthoughts. But they can never be 100% fulfilled (for there is always more one could do). Contemporary thinkers usually use different terms for this distinction, but it is the same point: negative and positive duties. So negative duties would be the thou-shalt-not's (varieties of "bring no harm"), and positive duties are the thou-shalt's (varieties of "bring aid").
So as Ellington's footnotes indicate, Kant's four examples at Ak. 422-423 are: (a) negative duty to self, (b) negative duty to others (c) positive duty to self, and (d) positive duty to others.
5. At Ak. 422-423, Kant enumerates four examples of how his first formulation works. At Ak. 429-430, he returns to the same four examples, this time applied to his second formulation. Do you think that any of Kant’s four examples work better for one formulation or the other? If so, is there some philosophical significance to this (alleged) asymmetry?
6. Note Kant’s reasons for not taking the Golden Rule as the fundamental principle of morality.
7. Be able to explain what Kant has in mind by the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy of the will.
8. Kant addresses four alternative moral theories: the principle of pursuing one’s own happiness, moral sense theories, ontological perfectionism, and theological voluntarism (aka the divine command theory). What are his objections to each?
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