Fondation of the metaphysics of manners is a work of Emmanuel Kant, published in 1785. The German title of origin is Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten ; traditionally translated Bases of the metaphysics of manners , rather unsuitable title since there is according to Kant only a " fondement".

Plan

• Foreword
• First section: Passage of the rational knowledge common of morality to philosophical knowledge
• Second section: Passage of popular moral philosophy to the metaphysics of manners
• Third section: Passage of the metaphysics of manners to the criticism of the practical pure reason.

Contents of work

Preface

For Kant, the old division of philosophy (Physical, ethical, Logical) is a division in conformity with the Nature of the things, although it is necessary to add the principle to him on which it is based to make sure that it is complete and capacity to determine the subdivisions necessary.

This principle of division is the following:

All rational Connaissance is:

• is formal ( logical ): it deals with the form of the Entendement and the Raison in themselves and the universal rules of the thought without meaning of objects;
• is material: it deals with given objects and the Loi S to which they are subjected. It is divided into two:
• natural laws ( physical );
• laws of freedom ( ethical )

Logic cannot thus have of part empirical; philosophies natural and Morale can have an empirical part: the laws according to which all arrives and those according to which all must arrive, which relates to respectively the Nature as a Objet of Expérience and the Volonté as it is affected by nature.

It is carefully necessary to separate the empirical part of the rational part, while making respectively precede the empirical Physique and the practical Anthropologie by a Métaphysique of nature and by a Métaphysique of manners. It is a question of working out a pure Philosophie which is expurgée of any empiricism to answer the Idée of Owe and of laws morals. The law must imply an absolute Nécessité for all to be rational. Consequently, any philosophy Morale rests on its pure part and gives to the Homme laws a priori as it is a be reasonable (and not as a man).

One needs moreover a faculty to judge by the experiment.

The foundation of the metaphysics of manners is the research and the establishment of the supreme principle of morality.

First section

Passage of the Knowledge rational commune of morality to philosophical knowledge.

Kant states the principle that: It is nothing which can without restriction being held for good, if it is not only one good Volonté. It draws aside all thus that concerns the temperament and fortune. Only the good will is the essential condition which returns to us worthy to be happy. But the function of the Raison is not to ensure the Bonheur: its function must-being to produce a good will in oneself.

However, the well should not be made by inclination but by Owe. And the duty is the Nécessité to achieve a action by Respect for the Loi. But which is this law of which the Représentation determines the will to be good absolutely?

It is the conformity of my control to the law in general, the Categorical imperative : " I must always act so that I can as want as my maxim becomes a universal law. "

Second section

The concept of happiness is a so unspecified concept, that, in spite of the desire which has any man to manage to be happy, nobody can never say in precise terms and coherent what truly it wishes and it wants. The reason is that all the elements which belong to the concept of happiness are as a whole empirical, i.e. they must be borrowed from the experiment; and that however for the idea of happiness an absolute whole, a maximum of wellbeing in my state present and all my future condition, is necessary.

However it is impossible that a finished being, if perspicacious and at the same time so powerful that it is supposed it, is made a given concept of what it wants here truly. Does he want the richness? That concern, that of desire, that traps cannot it by attracting there on its head! Does he want much knowledge and lights? Perhaps that will make it only give him a more penetrating glance to represent to him in an all the more terrible way the evils which until now are still concealed at its sight and which are however inevitable, or although to still charge of more than needs its desires than it has already well enough sorrow to satisfy. Does he want a long life? Who answers him that it would not be a long suffering? Does he want health at least? How of time the indisposition of the body diverted excess where would have made fall a perfect health, etc! In short, it is unable to determine with a whole certainty according to some principle what would make it truly happy: for that it would be necessary omniscience for him. (...) It follows from there that the requirements of prudence, from speaking exactly, cannot order of anything, i.e. to represent actions in an objective way like practically necessary, that it should them be rather held for councils (consilia) that for commands (proecepta) of the reason; the problem which consists in determining in a way sure and general which action can support the happiness of a be reasonable is a completely insoluble problem; there thus is not in this respect requirement which can order, in a strict sense word, to make what makes happy, because happiness is an ideal, not of the reason, but of imagination, founded only on empirical principles, which one would wait vainly until they can determine an action by which would be reached the totality of a series of consequences actually infinite…

Third section

See too

• Moral
• Metaphysical
• History of Metaphysical metaphysics
• of manners

External bond

• Card of reading on CNAM.fr