It’s All About Power: The Deep Structure of Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Its Three Formulations

Abstract

Commentators on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals have been deeply skeptical of Kant’s claim that his first formulation of the Categorical Imperative (CI), the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), is capable of doing all the work that Kant claims it can. Against such skeptics, Marina shows that a proper understanding of the deep structure of FUL reveals the way in which it exposes contradictions in maxims of natural violence. A clue to this structure can be found through an analysis of Kant’s order of presentation of his four examples, in particular the fact that Kant begins with an analysis of the contradiction exhibited in the maxim of suicide. Marina shows that the importance of this example is that in this case the very integrity of the power of the will is dissolved through a logical contradiction of the will with itself. The same contradiction is also operative in maxims of murder and mayhem. Furthermore, a correct analysis of FUL also reveals that Kant is justified in his claim that all three formulations of CI are equivalent.