I need help developing a thesis for Kant's Groundwork for Metaphysics of morals. I do not know where to begin

Answer 1

The Major Themes of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:

• Some of the central themes of the Groundwork, which have become familiar parts of our modern moral outlook, include the following:
(1) We are all, as human beings, ends in ourselves, and not to be used as mere means by others;
(2) Respect for one’s own humanity involves respect for others;
(3) Morality is itself identical with freedom, and acting immorally involves being enslaved.
• It is also well worth keeping in mind, when you study the Groundwork, that the book is essentially one long argument, which runs from the beginning to the end of the book.

Two Important Kantian Distinctions:

• The first piece of technical language which you’ll come across in the Groundwork is Kant’s use of two kinds of distinctions which come from his earlier, theoretical philosophy, and which apply to our judgements. These are:

(1) The Analytic/Synthetic distinction. This concerns what makes a judgement true or false. Analytic statements are true by virtue of the meanings of the words involved (e.g. ‘All bachelors are unmarried men.’). Synthetic judgements are judgements which are true in a more substantive sense – i.e. these are judgements which add something new to our knowledge of the subject in hand. Kant thought that, because they had to tell us something substantive, moral judgements had to be synthetic (or else they would tell us only about the meanings of the words which we were using).

(2) The A Priori / A Posteriori distinction. This concerns how we come to know of a judgment’s truth. A judgement is known a priori if it is know independently of any particular experience, but is known a posteriori if it is known only through our experience of the world. All analytical truths, it is claimed, are known a priori – e.g. we know that ‘All bachelors are unmarried men’ even before we have any experience of bachelors in the world. Most synthetic truths – e.g. ‘There are more bachelors in London now than at any time since the War’ – are known a posteriori: that is, those judgements come to be synthesized through experience.

• Kant thought – and this is a very central aspect of his conception of morality – that all moral judgements must be a priori. That is, he thought that all judgements of morality have to be completely independent of any contingent facts about how the world happens to be, and thus have to be derivable in abstraction from any particular experience, and can instead be derived from pure reason alone. This means that, for Kant, moral judgements have to be of a very particular kind: they have to be synthetic a priori judgements. Kant’s claim was that such judgements were possible, and that the judgements of morality, philosophy, mathematics, and geometry were all of this special kind.

Preface to the Groundwork:

• We here see Kant’s argument as running something like this: given that moral judgements deal with how the world ought to be, and not with how it is, it must be the case that they cannot be derived from experience, which can only tell us how things are. Thus, moral judgements must be a priori, as they are independent of how the world happens to be. By the ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, Kant means that collection of knowledge of pure, a priori judgements about morality.
• This book is a Groundwork for that ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, in the sense that it sets itself the task of establishing the foundations on which that ‘metaphysics’ will come to rest – that is, Kant is setting himself the task of showing that there is a domain of laws which apply to our behaviour as rational beings, and that (what, for him, follows from this) there is such a thing as morality.
• As Kant tells us, the purpose of the book is that of “seeking out and establishing of the supreme principle of morality”
• Kant thinks that the principle which tells us that we ought to behave according to moral laws must itself be a synthetic a priori principle, for ethics to exist at all.
• The Groundwork is thus designed to prove that such a principle – which Kant calls the Categorical Imperative – does exist. For Kant, this is identical to showing that morality, as such, exists.
• The Categorical Imperative is, at base, simply the principle that our actions should have the form of moral conduct; which is to say (for Kant) that our actions should be derivable from universal principles.

Answer 2

Groundwork Of Metaphysics Of Morals

Answer 3

A previous due-evening guesstimate: Kant on the single facet recommended "the guideline of thoroughness," and additionally suggested that the efficient utility of that rule did no longer consistently require suitable definition, if the thought/axiom have been a sparkling and commonly held one. This imo anticipates Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems, in that some "truths" or "definitions" are underivable from the device's axiomization: comparable to "for all sensible purposes" concept of John Bell. For Kant in his Fund. concepts, metaphysics is an a priori wisdom of categoreals some Ding an sich. This a priori metaphysics is for this reason, in Kantspeak, guy made, as no longer containing a (venture-predicate) tautology. it'd desire to be sensible to settle for Quine's critique of "guy made"--i.e., Quine's concept that "guy made" is that that's grounded in actuality--fairly than Kant's (that which has no venture-predicate tautology (i.e., no predicate contained in venture)). In Quine's critique, Kant's "guy made a priori" has much less import, as Quine accepts no fake or unfactual guy made propositions. Combining a priori with guy made for this reason will become extra "Ding an sich"-checkable, a minimum of empirically, in Quine's attitude, and the Kantian idealist distinction of analytic and guy made is thereby muted.

Answer 4

Do not begin. Forget. Study Aristotle instead for at least five years. Yes, you need help...developing.