Talk:CC Kant

Summary of Groundwork draft

Background

The Groundwork was written 1785. Kant meant it to be a popular work explaining his formulation of the moral law and how he believes freedom is possible. A more academic, technical, and complete version is found in Critique of Practical Reason, which was published in 1788.

The Groundwork is divided into three parts:
1. Refinement of moral knowledge via regression from ordinary moral understanding.
2. Using this moral knowledge to formulate the moral law (Kant will present three).
3. A proof of freedom.

CC students are normally asked to read the first two parts. This is because Kant disowned the Groundwork version of the proof of freedom. Dissatisfied with it, he wrote a completely new proof of freedom in Critique of Practical Reason. Hence, modern scholars now consider the third part of the Groundwork philosophically irrelevant, and thus it is not included in the CC syllabus. If your instructor did assign the third part, he or she probably didn't know much about Kant.

Part 1

The point Kant is making is that people are born with basic moral truths. So in merely presenting cases, one extracts moral knowledge. You don't need a philosopher to tell right from wrong - everybody understands morality just as much as everybody else does. That's Kant's point.

What Kant does in regressing from ordinary moral understanding is give you a bunch of cases. From these cases you get a more explicit understanding of the implicit knowledge which you knew all along. In effect, he is extracting moral knowledge and hence giving the reader a more profound grasp of it.

Glossary

A priori: something is a priori only if it necessarily exists, only if it universally applies, and only if it arises from activity of the mind.
Maxim: a careful and deliberate principle of action. An example of a maxim is "I will not let anything interfere with my schoolwork." It is a principle which dictates further action.

More content and elucidation to follow. Nateoxford 07:40, 29 December 2009 (EST)