The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals is published in 1785, four years after the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). The novelty of the work comes from its break with a long metaphysical tradition that goes back to Plato: that of connecting within the same theory the reference to being –or the supreme being with the reference to good work–. The most paradigmatic example of this type of project would be that of Spinoza's ethics, which begins with God and reaches the good life of free men with the same argument. The metaphysics of customs projected by Kant, on the other hand, does not contain a theory of being or of the supreme being.
In fact, according to the result of the examination of the cognitive faculty carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, neither the doctrine of the immortality of the soul nor that of the existence of God –which are presented...read more