Section I

Teaching Ethics

The very concept of virtue already implies that virtue must be acquired (that it is not innate); one need not appeal to anthropological knowledge based on experience to see this. For a human being's moral capacity would not be virtue were it not produced by the strength of his resolution in conflict with powerful opposing inclinations. Virtue is the product of pure practical reason insofar as it gains ascendancy over such inclinations with consciousness of its supremacy (based on freedom).

That virtue can and must be taught already follows from its not being innate; a doctrine of virtues is therefore something that can be taught But since one does not acquire the power to put the rules of virtue into practice merely by being taught how one ought to behave in order to conform with the concept of virtue, the Stoics meant only that virtue cannot be taught merely by concepts of duty or by exhortations (by paraenesis), but must instead be exercised and cultivated by efforts to combat the inner enemy within man (asceticism); for one cannot straightway do all that one wants to do, without having first tried out and exercised one's powers. But the decision to do this must be made all at once and completely, since a disposition (animus) to surrender at times to vice, in order to break away from it gradually, would itself be impure and even vicious, and so could bring about no virtue (which is based on a single principle).

Preface

A philosophy of any subject (a system of rational knowledge from concepts) requires a system of pure rational concepts independent of any conditions of intuition, that is, a metaphysics. – The only question is whether every practical philosophy, as a doctrine of duties, and so too the doctrine of virtue (ethics), also needs metaphysical first principles, so that it can be set forth as a genuine science (systematically) and not merely as an aggregate of precepts sought out one by one (fragmentarily). – No one will doubt that the pure doctrine of right needs metaphysical first principles; for it has to do only with the formal condition of choice that is to be limited in external relations in accordance with laws of freedom, without regard for any end (the matter of choice). Here the doctrine of duties is, accordingly, a mere scientific doctrine (doctrina scientiae).

But in this philosophy (the doctrine of virtue) it seems directly contrary to the idea of it to go all the way back to metaphysical first principles, so as to make the concept of duty, though purified of anything empirical (any feeling), the incentive. For what sort of concept can be made of the force and herculean strength needed to subdue the vice-breeding inclinations if virtue is to borrow its weapons from the arsenal of metaphysics, a speculative subject that few know how to handle? Hence all doctrine of virtue, in lecture halls, from pulpits, or in popular books, also becomes ridiculous if it is decked out in scraps of metaphysics.

The edition

The two parts of The Metaphysics of Morals were first published separately, the Doctrine of Right probably in January 1797 and the Doctrine of Virtue in August of the same year. In the edition of 1798, Kant's revisions to the text were apparently limited to adding a parenthetical explanation of his term Läsion (AK 249) and an appendix in reply to Friedrich Bouterwek's review of the Doctrine of Right published on 18 February 1797. A more extensively revised edition was published in 1803, during Kant's lifetime but without his cooperation.

The present translation is based on the text of The Metaphysics of Morals edited by Paul Natorp in volume 6 (1907) of the Prussian Academy of the Sciences edition of Kant's works. Natorp's decision not to use the “improved” edition of 1803 is based on his conviction that such alterations in the Doctrine of Virtue as are improvements do not justify the use of a text in the production of which Kant was not involved. I have followed Natorp in relegating to notes any substantive emendations that clarify the text. I have also made use of his notes in identifying authors whose works Kant cites.

It has long been recognized that the text of The Doctrine of Right is corrupt to the extent that paragraphs 4–8 in §6 do not belong there. On the history of this discovery, see p. 40 n. 18. Bernd Ludwig, in his Philosophische Bibliothek edition of the Rechtslehre (Hamburg, Meiner, 1986), proceeded on the hypothesis that this corruption of the text could have been far more extensive than this passage and could account for the obscurity of the work elsewhere.

A sketch of Immanuel Kant's life takes very little space. Except for a conflict with the royal censor over his writings on religion, he led the quiet life of a faculty member within a small eighteenth-century European university. He was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, 22 April 1724, and he died there 12 February 1804, never having left the Königsberg area, where he taught first as a private tutor and then, for some twenty-five years, served as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. So influential have been his publications, however, that, like Plato before him, no one after him could do philosophy without taking him into account. Even today his remains the premier moral theory. Although his political philosophy has not had the same impact as his ethical doctrines, it did anticipate the classical liberalism underlying republican forms of government today.

Kant had written about morality in several of his earlier works, but The Groundwork (or Foundations) of the Metaphysics of Morals, published in 1785, was his first book devoted exclusively to ethical theory. As its title indicates and as Kant also stated in its preface, this book was intended to provide the foundations or groundwork for a future work entitled The Metaphysics of Morals. He had claimed to be writing a book on that topic as early as 1768, but he did not actually publish this volume until 1797. (The Critique of Practical Reason was published in 1788 and the Critique of Judgment in 1790.) Given the time he had to think about its contents and the fact that he waited until near the end of his professional life to issue it, presumably The Metaphysics of Morals reflects his most mature views on the topics discussed in it.

Introduction

The Concept of a Duty to Oneself Contains (at First Glance) a Contradiction

If the I that imposes obligation is taken in the same sense as the I that is put under obligation? a duty to oneself is a self-contradictory concept. For the concept of duty contains the concept of being passively constrained (I am bound). But if the duty is a duty to myself, I think of myself as binding and so as actively constraining (I, the same subject, am imposing obligation). And the proposition that asserts a duty to myself (I ought to bind myself) would involve being bound to bind myself (a passive obligation that was still, in the same sense of the relation, also an active obligation), and hence a contradiction. – One can also bring this contradiction to light by pointing out that the one imposing obligation (auctor obligationis) could always release the one put under obligation (subiectum obligations) from the obligation (terminus obligationis), so that (if both are one and the same subject) he would not be bound at all to a duty he lays upon himself. This involves a contradiction.

For suppose there were no such duties: then there would be no duties whatsoever, and so no external duties either. – For I can recognize that I am under obligation to others only insofar as I at the same time put myself under obligation, since the law by virtue of which I regard myself as being under obligation proceeds in every case from my own practical reason; and in being constrained by my own reason, I am also the one constraining myself.

How to Have Something External as One’s Own

That is rightfully mine (meum iuris) with which I am so connected that another's use of it without my consent would wrong me. The subjective condition of any possible use is possession.

But something external would be mine only if I may assume that I could be wronged by another's use of a thing even though I am not in possession of it. – So it would be self-contradictory to say that I have something external as my own if the concept of possession could not have different meanings, namely sensible possession and intelligible possession, and by the former could be understood physical possession but by the latter a merely rightful possession of the same object.

But the expression “an object is external to me” can mean either that it is an object merely distinct from me (the subject) or else that it is also to be found in another location (positus) in space or time. Only if it is taken in the first sense can possession be thought of as rational possession; if taken in the second sense it would have to be called empirical possession. – Intelligible possession (if this is possible) is possession of an object without holding it (detentio).

Whoever wants to assert that he has a thing as his own must be in possession of an object, since otherwise he could not be wronged by another's use of it without his consent. For if something outside this object which is not connected with it by rights affects it, it would not be able to affect himself (the subject) and do him any wrong.