The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

x, 228 pp. "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is probably the most difficult short work in modern philosophical literature. Despite its great popularity scholars and philosophers have arrived at no common agreement about what it seeks to prove, what arguments it employs, or whether it is successful. Even the careful reader is baffled by complex chains of reasoning compressed into brief paragrphs and then beguiled by a series of surprisingly concrete examples which prove sadly misleading as clues to the more abstract doctrines surrounding them.... The willingness to attempt a philosophical reconstruction of a text springs from the conviction that its author possessed genuine insight into his problems, and that because, in a manner of speaking, he saw more deeply than he was able to say, it would be fruitful to study even his obscurest passages in an effort to wring from them the truth he dimly perceived. Philosophical reconstruction is a gamble in which the reader wagers his time and energy on the text, hoping to win from it results that he could not have discovered by his own unaided efforts.... Because I believe that Kant correctly identified the principal problems of moral philosophy and that he had some genuine insight into their solution, I am prepared to take this gamble."