ABSTRACT
Many of Immanuel Kant’s chief works in the early 1790s are devoted to practical philosophy. The Critique of Judgment’s treatment of taste and teleology is concerned both with moral psychology and with the view of the world that a morally disposed person should take. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant conceives of ordinary moral reasoning as the prioritizing, weighing, and balancing of duties—and of the obligating reasons based on them. Some duties require specific actions or omissions; others, the wide or imperfect duties, require only the setting of ends. In the Groundwork, Kant proposes to identify and establish the supreme principle of morality. Kant in fact offers a system of three formulas: the first identifying the principle by the form of universal law, the second by the motive of the end in itself, and the third by the complete determination of maxims contained in the idea of autonomy or the rational will as universally legislative for a realm of ends.
