Fundamental Principals of the Metaphysic of Morals

Fundamental Principals of the
Metaphysic of Morals

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Title: Fundamental Principals of the Metaphysic of Morals
Author: Immanuel Kant
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5682] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule] [This file was first posted on August 7, 2002]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, FUNDAMENTAL
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1785
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS
by Immanuel Kant
translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott
PREFACE

Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.
This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing; and the only improvement
that can be made in it is to add the principle on which it is based, so that we may both
satisfy ourselves of its completeness, and also be able to determine correctly the
necessary subdivisions.
All rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the
latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and
with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. Formal
philosophy is called logic. Material philosophy, however, has to do with determinate
objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either
laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is physics, that of the latter,
ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively.
Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary
laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be
logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable
of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their
empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of
experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the
former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws
according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the
conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.
We may call all philosophy empirical, so far as it is based on grounds of experience: on
the other band, that which delivers its doctrines from a priori principles alone we may call
pure philosophy. When the latter is merely formal it is logic; if it is restricted to definite
objects of the understanding it is metaphysic.
In this way there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysic- a metaphysic of nature and a
metaphysic of morals. Physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. It is
the same with Ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical
anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part.
All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labour, namely, when, instead
of one man doing everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of work distinct
from others in the treatment it requires, so as to be able to perform it with greater facility
and in the greatest perfection. Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished
and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the
greatest barbarism. It might deserve to be considered whether pure philosophy in all its
parts does not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it would not be better for
the whole business of science if those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to
blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed in