PHIL-P 140 Lecture 6: 11-2 Lecture Notes (Part I) Day 6
Document Summary
Kant"s groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (con"t. ) Kant wants to seek out and establish the fundamental principle of morality. The fundamental principle will govern our conduct in the same way that a law does. In other words, when we state a law, we are not talking about any particular item or object. For instance, laws of physics govern the behavior of all entities in the physical world. A moral law also has this level of generality. It means that moral laws define what we must do regardless of how we feel, the circumstances we find ourselves in, the way the world is, etc. It is thus necessarily the case that one must act in accordance with a moral law. This has implications for how we can come to find out about the moral law according to kant. The implications are that we cannot establish this fundamental law empirically.
