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Three works of Kant are referred to by the following abbreviations: G = Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (J. F. Hartnoch, Riga, 2nd edn., 1786). KpV = Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (J. F. Hartnoch, Riga, 1st edn., 1788). MdS = Metaphysik der Sitten (F. Nicolovius, Königsberg, 2nd edn., 2vols., 1798). In the edition of Kant's works published by the Berlin Academy, G appears in Vol. 4, KpV in Vol. 5 and MdS in Vol. 6. Two page references are given for each quotation or citation: the first to the original, the second to the Berlin Academy edition, Thus ‘G, 52/ 421’ = ‘Grundlegung, 2nd edn., p. 52, Berlin Academy edition, Vol. 4, p. 421’. For G and KpV I chiefly follow Beck's translations in Immanuel Kant: The Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949); for MdS, Vol. 1, chiefly John Ladd's translation in Kant: The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis, 1965), and for MdS, Vol. 2, chiefly James Ellington, Kant: The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis, 1964). However, I have occasionally followed Paton or Ellington for G; and I have made free use of W. Hastie's translation (Kant: The Philosophy of Law, Edinburgh, 1887) of the portions of MdS, Vol. 1, left untranslated by Ladd. Like all commentators, I cannot avoid responsibility for the translations I use: our task is to interpret what Kant wrote, not his translators' renderings of it.
Aune, Bruce: Kant's Theory of Morals, Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J., 1979.
Beck, Lewis W.: A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1960.
Hart, H. L. A.: Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1953. [Inaugural Lecture.]
MacIntyre, Alasdair: ‘The magic in the pronoun “my”’, Review Essay on Bernard Williams, Moral Luck, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981. Ethics 94 (1983–84), 113–25.
Paton, H. J.: The Categorical Imperative, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1971. [First edition: Hutchinson, London, 1947.]
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This paper was presented to a Conference on the History of Ethics at the University of California at Irvine in January 1984, made possible by a grant from the Franklin J. Matchette Foundation. It presents a program for research into the structure of what Kant called his “metaphysics of morals”. I did not intend to publish it: my hope, abundantly fulfilled, was to elicit criticism in the light of which I could correct flaws in the program proposed before attempting to carry it out. Since the criticisms offered at the Conference did not invalidate the program, I could not justify refusing the invitation of the editors of Topoi to publish it. However, I have not had leisure to revise the paper to take account of those criticisms, in particular those of its formal commentators, Barbara Herman and Thomas E. Hill Jr. Hence the paper that follows expresses my pre-Conference conception of my project; and I would now revise some of the interpretations of Kant offered in it. I beg those who read it to regard it as a report of an early state of a program, which I think sound in the main, although defective in various details.
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Donagan, A. The structure of Kant's metaphysics of morals. Topoi 4, 61–72 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138649
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138649