This chapter defends Kant’s claim that all the formula for the derivation of the categorical imperative are in some sense ‘identical’. I show that although Kant rejects the claim that the ultimate object of theology (God) can be a worthy object for us, nonetheless, Kant’s movement of thought still has a theological shape. This is because Kant is concerned with what would be a worthy object for a rational being, whose dignity is such that the object of attention must not be in any sense external. This is the oldest theological problem of all, reaching back through Aquinas, and back to Aristotle and Plato, gravitating towards a version of the perennial answer, ‘thought thinking itself’. Kant claims, not entirely perspicuously, that the different formulations are ‘three ways of representing the principle of morality’, and that although they are at ‘bottom only so many formulae of the very same law’, nonetheless ‘there is a difference among them…intended to bring an idea of reason closer to intuition’. Commentators have struggled to hold together Kant’s claims, with regard to the ‘sameness’ of, and the ‘difference’ between, the formulae, interpretative approaches tend to focus exclusively on either the purported identity or difference. It is suggested that if autonomy is a variation on the ancient theological problem of ‘thought thinking itself’, then we might find a fundamental unity underlying the different formulae, such that the will’s giving to itself its own self-conception is the single reality represented under different aspects, in the various formulae.

Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-41317-6 — Formulas of the Moral Law Allen Wood Excerpt More Information ## Formulas of the Moral Law Allen Wood Abstract: This Element defends a reading of Kant’s formulas of the moral law in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. It disputes a long tradition accepted both by Kant’s critics and defenders, concerning what the first formula (Universal Law/Law of Nature) attempts to do. But the reading proposed here is the only one that agrees with both what Kant says about these for mulas and with what he actually does with them in his discussion of the four famous examples – which are also discussed here at some length. The Element also expounds the Formulas of Humanity, Autonomy and the Realm of Ends, arguing that it is only the Formula of Humanity from which Kant derives general duties, and that it is only the third formula (Autonomy/Realm of Ends) that represents a complete and definitive statement of the moral principle as Kant derives it in the Groundwork. The Element also disputes the common claim that the various formulas are “equivalent,” arguing that this claim is either false or else non sensical because grounded on a false p