Much of the argumentation in the second half of the Groundwork centers around the question of means and ends. Only by embracing this autonomy does man properly become man. Kant's categorical imperative can therefore be seen as a tool for man to recover his autonomy from these outside powers. The church, the state, the family: these are all simply forms of heteronomy, of outside tyranny, that can never serve as the legitimate basis for moral judgment. Only man can be the proper source of his own moral authority and of his own freedom. Considering the perceived coldness of the categorical imperative and Kant's emphasis on duty, it is important to note how quietly revolutionary this point is.

AutonomyĬentral to Kant's anthropology (his account of man) is the notion that man's freedom and his dignity consists in his autonomy-his ability to give laws to himself.

This notion of freedom would be crucial for the Enlightenment-namely, that freedom does not consist in being free from the law, which would be chaos, but rather in being able to legislate laws for oneself. Therefore, reason is the only possible basis for freedom, and the only possible basis for morality. Freedom consists in resisting the authority of anything other than our own mind-including our own bodies and emotions-to set laws for us. We are free from the tyranny of our instincts and inclinations precisely because we are able to make moral judgments. Freedomįor Kant, freedom and morality are reciprocal concepts. The concept has an unmistakably Christian inflection-the archetypical duty Kant mentions Christ's command that we love our enemies. The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals works backwards from this fact of our experience to determine by what 'right' we feel these duties and choose to follow them. The ability to feel the pull of a duty whose legitimacy we recognize- even though we might feel inclined to do otherwise-is for Kant the basic fact of our experience that lets there be a moral philosophy at all. Duties are those things we feel that we must do-often in spite of the fact that we don't want to do them. Dutyįor Kant, duty is the opposite of inclination. For Kant, the law is the means by which human minds connect themselves to one another by seeing themselves as part of a community of rational thinkers. The appeal of the law for Kant is its ability to be universal, and therefore to bring us out of the problem of solipsism and relativism-namely, the belief that our moral judgments are relevant only for us, and that we have no right to hold others to the same standards. The law is a crucial concept in all of Kant's work, and he frequently uses law-related images and language, especially that of judging. Kant believes that for moral judgments to be valid they need to be based on a law, and to be formulated as a law.

Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals