Morality, Kant says, cannot be regarded as a set of rules which prescribe the means necessary to the achievement of a given end; its rules must be obeyed without consideration of the consequences that will follow from doing so or not. A principle that presupposes a desired object as the determinant of the will cannot give rise to a moral law; that is, the morality of an act of will cannot be determined by the matter or content of the will for when the will is materially determined the question of its morality does not arise.
This consideration leads Kant to one of his most important th…
