ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant was bom and lived his whole life in Koenigsberg, East Prussia. He spent his whole adult life as a teacher and professor, writing and lecturing on a wide range of subjects, including the natural sciences. For Kant, and indeed for all philosophers from the seventeenth century on, morality is largely a matter of duty, and questions about duties are mainly questions about how one should conduct oneself in one’s relations with others. In his most widely read book, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant attempts to defend a particular account of the moral standpoint, of the nature of the requirements of morality, and of the source of their authority. In the preface to the Grounding, Kant speaks of morality in terms of moral laws. Kant presents with an elaborate and exciting system of interrelated ideas. The argument depends crucially on assumptions Kant makes very early, when he gives his account of the nature of morally good action.
