Kant's Metaphysics of the Will
Freedom, Reason, and the Moral Law

A groundbreaking study demonstrating that Kant was concerned with two distinct deductions in Groundwork and in the second Critique, one successful, the other one impossible.

Jaqueline Mariña (Author)

9781009574747, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 October 2025

272 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.49 kg

'Kant's Metaphysics of the Will reveals the deep structure of the moral law, as Kant contextualizes and justifies it in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. Mariña's philosophically rich and carefully argued study provides a sympathetic and non-mystical understanding of the trajectory from the Groundwork to the second Critique and is, hence, a welcome contribution to the long-standing debate on the moral law and its controversial justifications in Kant's critical metaphysics of morals.' Konstantin Pollok, Gutenberg Universität Mainz

The idea of the individual as autonomous, capable of understanding through the use of reason what morality requires, and capable of doing the right thing because it is right, is one of the pillars of the Enlightenment, and Kant's ethics provides a robust account of the way in which the individual's capacity for moral insight, and freedom to make choices in accordance with such insight, are indispensable for any account of an authentic commitment to the objective good. Jacqueline Mariña situates Kant's ethical and metaethical arguments in the wider context of his claims in his critical works, convincingly rebutting recent claims that he did not succeed in showing that rational agents are necessarily bound by the moral law, and that he ended up with an empty moral dogmatism. Her book shows that the whole of Kant's critical works, both theoretical and practical, were much more coherent than many interpreters allow.

1. Introduction
2. The power of reason
3. The deep structure of the moral law
4. The transfer argument
5. Freedom and internalism
6. The grounding argument
7. Two deductions and the problem with freedom
8. Epilogue
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]