Grounding For The Metaphysics Of Morals Summary

In his work "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals" Kant explores the question of morality and outlines its main principles. In the Part II of his work Kant reveals what morality is, as well as what it is not through discussing its origin and defines morality as a type of imperative (a commanding sentence). Kant starts his reflections from making a claim that morality can in no way emanate from experience and that there has never been an experience of purely moral actions, because actions base on reasons, which are always obscure. After describing experience and empirical values as those that cannot be ascribed to morality, Kant discusses reason as its only source and the forms morality can take. This paper will discuss the imperative quality
Before revealing the essence of morality and outlining the three moral laws in the last part of the chapter, Kant discusses the form of morality. Firstly, Kant asserts laws to be the form morality takes to guide humans so that the objective necessity will correspond to the subjective necessity. Objective necessity or the actions dictated my reason are moral and good, whereas the subjective necessity is human will or the choices humans make, which may and may not be in accord with the voice of reason. It turns that the problem of immorality of human actions lies in the discrepancy of commands given by reason and those by human will. Here Kant proceeds to the idea of laws, which are needed to guide
Nevertheless, as Kant doubts "whether any true virtue is actually to be found in the world"(1120), he ascribes to the laws the necessity to guide people towards the moral actions. In contrast, for Aristotle (2012) morality or the good is the personal choice of every human being and is not connected to any external forces such as laws or rules. In addition, the main discrepancy in the views of the philosophers lies in Kant's perception of moral laws as categorical imperatives that do not have any purpose behind, and Aristotle's view of good actions as means of achieving happiness. For Aristotle, happiness is impossible without the complete virtue, which in combination with a complete life leads to happiness. At the same time, Kant argues that there is no motivation for following moral laws and that the importance of committing moral actions is in the lack of any further purpose, of which moral will be considered as