categorical imperative: a standalone construct

Immanuel Kant introduced the categorical imperative in his 1785 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals) and developed it further in the 1788 Critique of Practical Reason, where he restated it as the fundamental law of pure practical reason. It names a moral command that binds unconditionally: it holds for every rational agent regardless of what that agent happens to want or aim at, in contrast to a hypothetical imperative, which tells you what to do only if you already have a particular goal. In its best-known formulation Kant states it as the requirement to act only on a maxim, meaning the personal principle or rule behind an action, that you could at the same time will to become a universal law binding on everyone. Kant gave several further formulations of the same principle, including the demand to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means. As a construct it is distinctive as the central test of duty in Kant's deontological ethics, an account that locates the moral worth of an action in the principle it follows rather than in its consequences, and it remains one of the most heavily cited reference points in Western moral philosophy.[1][2][3]

Unit

A supreme, unconditional moral principle stated by Kant in several equivalent formulations

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Identified textually in Kant's practical philosophy and applied through the universalizability test: whether the maxim of an action could be willed as a universal law without contradiction