Ergo Reader
Essential Passages
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← Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

Essential Passages · 5 selections

Ideas worth
reading firsthand.

These selections trace the shortest route through Kant's moral philosophy: from the good will and acting from duty to the categorical imperative, humanity as an end, and the kingdom of ends. The framing is by Ergo; Kant's translated text is unchanged.

Immanuel Kant · 1785
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1883)

  1. 01

    First Section · 3 min

    The Good Will

    Kant begins with a startling claim: talents, courage, power, and even happiness can all be used badly. Only a good will is good without qualification, and its worth does not depend on whether it succeeds. This opening establishes the standard that everything else in the book tries to explain.
  2. 02

    First Section · 5 min

    Acting from Duty

    An action can agree with duty while being done for profit, sympathy, or some other inclination. Kant uses ordinary examples to isolate the much harder case in which a person does the right thing because it is right. The passage explains why moral worth lies in the principle of action, not merely in its outward result.
  3. 03

    Second Section · 1 min

    The Categorical Imperative

    Kant now states his best-known test of a moral principle. Before acting, ask whether the maxim behind the action could be willed as a universal law for everyone. The second formulation here sharpens the idea by asking us to imagine the maxim as a law of nature.
  4. 04

    Second Section · 2 min

    Humanity as an End

    Kant approaches the moral law from the value of rational agency. A person is not a tool whose worth depends on someone else's purposes, but an end in himself. The famous prohibition on treating people merely as means follows from that claim.
  5. 05

    Second Section · 4 min

    The Kingdom of Ends

    The argument culminates in an ideal moral community whose members are both subjects and authors of common laws. Kant contrasts price with dignity: what has a price can be replaced, while rational nature has worth beyond exchange. This passage joins universality, autonomy, and respect for persons in a single picture.