Kant's “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”: A Reader's
Guide Paul Guyer, Kant’s “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals” A Reader's Guide, Continuum Press, 2007. Kant is
probably the philosopher who best typifies the thought and
ideals of the Enlightenment. He was influenced by the modern
physics of Newton, the rationalist perfectionism of Leibniz and
Wolff, the critical empiricism of Locke and Hume, and Rousseau's
celebration of liberty and individualism, and his work can be
seen partly as an attempt to combine and synthesize these
various ideas. In moral philosophy, he developed a radical and
radically new conception of the unconditional value of human
autonomy, which he opposed to both theological and utilitarian
conceptions of moral value. He first expounded his moral vision
in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), the
seminal work of modern moral philosophy in which he introduced
his infamous 'categorical imperative'. Paul Guyer's Reader's
Guide will help readers find their way in