Kant e o problema do princípio moral supremo na fundamentação da Metafísica dos costumes

Abstract

Emmanuel Kant, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, inquires about the nature of the supreme principle of morality, aiming at a formulation of the metaphysics of morals. This study tries to determine the supreme moral principle from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and to present the key concepts of the first section as the basis for a discussion on the groundwork of morals. Following that, we consider analyzing the remainder of the work from the standpoint of two critics to Kant by some of his interpreters, namely: i) Kant would have created many formulations of “supreme moral principle”, bringing forth a problem of compatibility of formulations; ii) Kant would be unclear and, therefore, would have failed in this task when trying to demonstrate the inference of the supreme principle in the third section. From that analysis, it is intended to verify, therefore, whether the critics to Kant are coherently supported by the Groundwork, as well as to clarify, from this opposition, Kant’s view of the supreme moral principle.