We may call all philosophy empirical, so far as it is based on grounds of experience: on the other hand, that which delivers its doctrines from à priori principles alone we may call pure philosophy. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Logic cannot have any empirical part that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. The science of the former is Physics, that of the latter, Ethics they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively. Material philosophy, however, has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing and the only improvement that can be made in it is to add the principle on which it is based, so that we may both satisfy ourselves of its completeness, and also be able to determine correctly the necessary subdivisions.Īll rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. 4.5 Of the Extreme Limits of all Practical Philosophy.Īncient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: Physics, Ethics, and Logic.4.4 How is a Categorical Imperative Possible?.

4.3 Of the Interest attaching to the Ideas of Morality.

4.2 Freedom must be presupposed as a Property of the Will of all Rational Beings.

4.1 The Concept of Freedom is the Key that explains the Autonomy of the Will.

4 Third Section: Transition from the metaphysic of morals to the critique of pure practical reason.

3.3 Classification of all Principles of Morality which can be founded on the Conception of Heteronomy.

3.2 Heteronomy of the Will as the Source of all spurious Principles of Morality.

3.1 The Autonomy of the Will as the Supreme Principle of Morality.

3 Second Section: Transition from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysic of morals.

2 First Section: Transition from the common rational knowledge of morality to the philosophical.

Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals