Hypothetical Imperatives and the Categorical Imperative

Abstract

In section i above we noted that in an early essay Kant had distinguished between being obliged to do something as a means to something else and being obliged ‘immediately’. In section ii we quoted a passage from the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant says that moral laws ‘command absolutely (not only hypothetically on the presupposition of other empirical ends)’. In section iii we considered his distinction between acting from inclination or with a view to happiness on the one hand, and acting ‘from duty’ on the other, and we noticed his view that an individual can find out whether he is acting from duty by asking himself: ‘Can I also will that the maxim of my action become a universal law?’ The idea that Kant has been working towards in these passages is that of the Categorical Imperative. He explains it in section ii of the Groundwork and in book i, chapter i of the Critique of Practical Reason.