Introduction

Immanuel Kant wrote nearly a dozen books and shorter monographs which deal with ethics. As the title suggests, the Groundwork does not offer a complete account of Kant’s ethical vision, but rather lays the foundation for it. Kant’s thoughts about ethics began to appear in print during a period when the doctrines of the British moralists dominated the philosophical scene. Through much of the 1760s Kant continued to express interest in sentimentalism. Many of Kant’s essays and Reflexionen from 1763 –1765 display his preoccupation with Rousseau and indicate that he was highly stimulated by Rousseau’s view that the motivational underpinnings of human behaviour are much more malleable than many others believed. Throughout the 1770s Kant was at work developing what eventually became the Critique of Pure Reason. It may be that Kant considered the moral disposition to be the desire to be worthy of happiness, as opposed to the desire to be happy.