A critique of the groundwork of Kant's ethics

pp. 51-87

in: Hans Reiner, Duty and inclination the fundamentals of morality discussed and redefined with special regard to Kant and Schiller, Berlin, Springer, 1983

Abstract

One thing that is indispensable to anyone intending a thorough critique of Kant's ethics is to have a knowledge of its method, and its method is the subject we shall have to treat next.¹ It is true that one cannot criticize any systematic ethics (or any other kind of philosophical system) unless one knows its method, but a knowledge of the method Kant's ethics follows is especially indispensable to a critique of it. The fact is that the special character of Kant's method is mainly accountable for the falseness of his theories on ethics and his inability to drop the mistaken assumptions underlying them. Moreover, one cannot know for certain what path a critique of this ethics should take until the questions about its method are resolved.