X—Kant’s Analytic Method and the Argument of Groundwork I

In the famous first section of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant sets out to identify the principle of morality, but each of the main steps of his argument has been said to encounter serious difficulties. In this essay, I argue that most of these difficulties can be resolved by reading Kant’s argument in light of his views on philosophical method. Using his description of the ‘analytic method’, I reconstruct the steps leading to the identification of the moral principle and show that they form a chain of what he calls ‘regressive’ reasoning. This reconstruction offers solutions to the three main difficulties diagnosed in the literature, although several unclarities remain.