Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nt87m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-22T10:16:24.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Will of All in Kant’s Groundwork

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2024

T. A. Pendlebury
T. A. Pendlebury*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Kant’s Groundwork II, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) seems to be the argumentative link between the notion of a categorical imperative and later formulae (e.g. of humanity), its function as this link dependent on its equivalence to both. Some commentators have denied this equivalence and read the section as a failure. Others have abandoned its expository development by reading later formulae into the FUL. I argue that we need do neither if we distinguish the universality of the FUL from that of the will of all and read Groundwork II as extracting the latter from common moral cognition.

Keywords

categorical imperativeformula of universal lawkingdom of endscommon moral cognitionpractical judgementaction from dutywill
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 423 - 445
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allison, Henry E. (1991) ‘On a presumed gap in the derivation of the categorical imperative’. Philosophical Topics, 19(1), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allison, Henry E. (2011) Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aune, Bruce (1979) Kant’s Theory of Morals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Callanan, John J. (2019) ‘Kant on misology and the natural dialectic’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 19(47), 1–22.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (2009) The Form of Practical Knowledge: A Study of the Categorical Imperative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fix, Jeremy D. and Pendlebury, T. A. (forthcoming) ‘The rational faculty of desire’. In Bacin, Stefano and Bagnoli, Carla (eds.), Reason, Agency, and Ethics: Kantian Themes in Contemporary Debates (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Geiger, Ido (2010) ‘What is the use of the universal law formula of the categorical imperative’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18(2), 271–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geiger, Ido (2015) ‘How are the different formulas of the categorical imperative related?’ Kantian Review, 20(3), 395–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grenberg, Jeanine (2013) Kant’s Defense of Common Moral Experience: A Phenomenological Account. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2016) ‘The twofold morality of Recht: once more unto the breach’. Kant-Studien, 107(1), 34–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2019) Kant on the Rationality of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara (2010) ‘The difference that ends make’. In Wuerth, Julian (ed.), Perfecting Virtue: Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 92–115.Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara (2021) The Moral Habitat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Thomas E., Jr. (1992) Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hills, Alison (2009) ‘Happiness in the groundwork ’. In Timmermann, Jens (ed.), Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992–2016) Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen W. (eds.), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2017) ‘Contradiction and Kant’s formula of universal law’. Kant-Studien, 108(1), 89–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2021) ‘Self-contradictions of the will: reply to Jens Timmermann’. Kant-Studien, 112(4), 611–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine M. (1996) Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyholm, Sven (2015) ‘Kant’s universal law formula revisited’ Metaphilosophy, 46(2), 280–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, Onora (1989) Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pendlebury, T. A. (2022) ‘The real problem of pure reason’. European Journal of Philosophy, 30, 45–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reath, Andrews (2006) Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reath, Andrews (2015) ‘The ‘Kantian roots’ of the original position’. In Hinton, Timothy (ed.), The Original Position (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 201–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2009) Force and Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schafer, Karl (2019) ‘Kant: constitutivism as capacities-first philosophy’. Philosophical Explorations, 22(2), 177–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schafer, Karl (2021) ‘Transcendental philosophy as capacities-first philosophy’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103(3), 661–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sticker, Martin (2016) ‘Kant’s criticism of common moral rational cognition’. European Journal of Philosophy, 25(1), 85–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmermann, Jens (2006) ‘Kantian duties to the self, explained and defended’. Philosophy, 81(317), 505–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmermann, Jens (2018) ‘A tale of two conflicts’. Kant-Studien, 109(4), 581–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ware, Owen (2021) Kant’s Justification of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willaschek, Marcus (2009) ‘Right and coercion: can Kant’s conception of right be derived from his moral theory?’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 17(1), 49–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossRefGoogle Scholar