The Philosophy of Morality and Beyond

Course content

Kant’s analysis of the principles underlying morality leads him to the statement of the categorical imperative, an idea that has been tremendously influential in the history of moral philosophy, yet also widely misunderstood. In this course we will first of all study the various formulations of the categorical imperative in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. But in order to be able to assess the status of Kant’s moral philosophy in the history of philosophy, we will also look at a number of influential figures who – in their different ways – can be seen to have gone beyond Kant in their understanding of the role, status and functioning of morality.