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Immanuel Kant

1724 AD — 1804 AD

Kant distinguishes good will from favourable circumstances and questions whether reason can specify a universal path to happiness. Read the contrasts between morality, prudence and imagined satisfaction through the argument.

Author and source reference ↗
▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗lifeknowledgetruthtimefaithjusticemindcourage

Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Immanuel Kant with lifetime years 1724–1804 and names Thomas Kingsmill Abbott as translator of this English work. Matthew Stapleton receives the electronic preparation credit. The linked text separates sections moving from common moral knowledge toward philosophical principles. Its HTML ISBN identifies the electronic edition, not a checked original print. The related reading gives context for two archive extracts without assigning composition dates to them.

Project Gutenberg catalogue — Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals ↗Checked related reading — Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals ↗ Catalogue identity/lifetime and linked edition credits, framing or cast

The opening of the First Section argues that good will is needed for a person to be worthy of happiness and examines how advantages can be used. This is an argument about moral value, not an assertion that poverty or misfortune proves wrongdoing. In the Second Section, Kant calls happiness an ideal of imagination while explaining why empirical consequences cannot yield a definite universal rule for achieving it. He distinguishes that difficulty from the demands of duty. The passage does not simply dismiss happiness as worthless. Both selected extracts match Abbott’s checked English translation.

Checked related reading — Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals ↗ First Section; opening discussion of good will and worthiness of happiness; Second Section; happiness, imagination and prudence

Reading this voice

Read the opening discussion of good will before the contrast between happiness and duty in the Second Section. Track Kant’s use of worthiness and prudence, rather than treating favourable circumstances as proof of moral merit.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

responsibilityhappinessjudgement

A work to read

Begin with these archive passages

Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-05. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.

Archive entries

01Undated
In the physical constitution of an organized being, that is, a being adapted suitably to the purposes of life, we assume it as a fundamental principle that no organ for any purpose will be found but what is also the fittest and best adapted for that purpose. Now in a being which has reason and a will, if the proper object of nature were its conservation, its welfare, in a word, its happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the creature to carry out this purpose. For all the actions which the creature has to perform with a view to this purpose, and the whole rule of its conduct, would be far more surely prescribed to it by instinct, and that end would have been attained thereby much more certainly that it ever can be by reason. Should reason have been communicated to this favored creature over and above, it must only have served it to contemplate the happy constitution of its nature, to admire it, to congratulate itself thereon, and to feel thankful for it to the beneficent cause, but not that it should subject its desires to that weak and delusive guidance, and meddle bunglingly with the purpose of nature. In a word, nature would have taken care that reason should not break forth into practical exercise, nor have the presumption, with its weak insight, to think out for itself the plan of happiness and the means of attaining it. Nature would not only have taken on herself the choice of the ends but also of the means, and with wise foresight would have entrusted both to instinct.
Immanuel Kant / quote
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07Undated
[A man] finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law, [where] men... let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species - in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him, and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes.
Immanuel Kant / quote
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09Undated
A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty.
Immanuel Kant / quote
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10Undated
(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us! Or if the path has merely eluded us so far, what indications may we use that might lead us to hope that in renewed attempts we will be luckier than those who have gone before us?
Immanuel Kant / quote
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13Undated
[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must take the lead with principles for its judgments according to constant laws and compel nature to answer its questions, rather than letting nature guide its movements by keeping reason, as it were, in leading-strings; for otherwise accidental observations, made according to no previously designed plan, can never connect up into a necessary law, which is yet what reason seeks and requires. Reason, in order to be taught by nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which alone the agreement among appearances can count as laws, and, in the other hand, the experiments thought in accordance with these principles - yet in order to be instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants to say, but like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them. Thus even physics owes the advantageous revolution in its way of thinking to the inspiration that what reason would not be able to know of itself and has to learn from nature, it has to seek in the latter (though not merely ascribe to it) in accordance with what reason itself puts into nature. This is how natural science was first brought to the secure course of a science after groping about for so many centuries.
Immanuel Kant / quote
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22Undated
A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition - that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination, nay, even of the sum-total of all inclinations... like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself.
Immanuel Kant / quote
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