Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

The nature and theoretical underpinnings of ethics have been an intellectual driving force animating the pursuits of great scholars. In the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) Immanuel Kant, one of the most powerful philosophical minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, inquires into the true nature of morality. In rejecting the results or consequences of action as the foundation of moral judgments, he denies that good or bad effects have any relevance in the...