Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

I purchased this book on the way to the library from an elderly man on the street, entranced by the somewhat frightening title of the book. After a couple pages in, I found it extremely difficult and put it down. The book sat on the top of my drawer for over a year unfinished - that is until today. In this review I will discuss my thoughts on Immanuel Kant’s attempt to create the supreme principle of morality in his book Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

To provide a little context, Immanuel Kant was one of the German central Enlightenment thinkers that shaped the way we look at ethics. His Metaphysics of Morals, ranks alongside Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in terms of influence. While it is short in length, Kant packs a lot of dense material in the 90 or so pages in this book. I did not understand everything in this book through multiple attempts, but I found adequate resources to explain the parts that I struggled with.

I always like philosophy books that take apart things like a mathematical equation. I find that thrilling, and Kant does a great job dismantling the variables of the human condition. His argument lies under the idea of a “good will” being the only pure righteous thing in a human despite what results it may bring. He builds upon this basis with reverence for moral law, to create an ends of a society that can look out for each other seamlessly. Finally, he ponders between the relationship of freedom and morality, which he argues is synonymous in nature. While you could undermine everything that he thinks by invalidating the core idea of “will”, I enjoy the proof that he architects throughout the three chapters.

I can’t quite say that I agree with Kantian ethics. Let’s imagine that Kant determined all killing to be universally bad. In this situation, if I saw a human go down the street killing hundreds of people, it would be wrong for me to kill this person and stop them because killing is universally bad, despite the result (stopping the violence) that it may bring. Additionally, my duty would be clouded by my motivation to live, meaning that this action was not righteous in his eyes.

I struggled to find a golden universal rule that could be used to guide all actions, because everything that I thought of had strange edge cases such as the prior paragraph. I want to make an argument for the ten commandments from the Bible, but even those seem to lack certain qualities of the categorical imperative that Kant defines. I left this book feeling that Kant has defined things well, but left an arduous task to find an applicable set of ethics or a solid foundation for his moral system. It all sounds nice on paper, but feels impossible in reality. I wouldn’t say that I am a strong fan of his works, but I am willing to concede that I may not be smart enough to truly understand his core rationale.

Overall Rating: 7/10