Reconciling Kant’s Categorical Imperative with Critics Amanda Maciocia College

In Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is a text that begs to be understood from some of the philosopher’s more well-known concepts including the categorical imperative, which is introduced in the book as a way of evaluating the motivations for individual action. For Kant, a proposition declaring a certain action as necessary includes ways of evaluating the motivations for one’s actions. This is in contrast to hypothetical imperatives that Kant suggests, outlines means to achieve ends: e.g. If I want to feel energized, I must eat something with sugar. On the other hand, a categorical imperative conveys a universal. This is described in Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative as: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law” (Kant, 1993, p. 30). He suggests that through “pure practical reason” we can decide ethically what is right and what is not. Importantly, Kant contrasts this with “pure reason”, which is the capacity to know if something is true without ever having shown and “practical reason” that allows us to understand the world we live in. Thus, the ability to decide ethically what is right is based on the pure practical...