Groundwork for Kant’s Practical Philosophy: Construction and Meaning of the Work "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals"

Abstract

In the article, the author provides a systematic analysis and interpretation of Kant’s major work ‘Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals’. The author demonstrates that Kant viewed his programme of founding a new kind of metaphysics as a distinctive unity of the practical and theoretical part of philosophy, i.e. a unity of pure practical reason with speculative reason. It is already manifested in the original common assumption of the ‘Groundwork’, because ‘at the end there can only be one and the same reason that can be diff erent only in its application’.

Keywords

• pure practical reason
• theoretical reason
• categorical imperative
• autonomy of will
• reality of freedom