• In the first (pp. 19-23; Akad. pp. 406-412), Kant sharply aligns morality with reason, as opposed to experience. Notice his comment (p. 19; Akad. 407) that experience can never tell us that an action, even one of our own, is done from moral duty as well as his comment near the end that our empirical knowledge of people (i.e., “anthropology”) can be required to apply moral laws but their statement is a matter of pure reason (i.e., “metaphysics”).

• Kant then presents the basic concepts of such a “metaphysics of morals” (pp. 23-29; Akad. pp. 412-420). He characterizes imperatives and distinguishes them as hypothetical (i.e., conditional on some end) or categorical (i.e., unconditional). Less importantly, he distinguishes hypothetical imperatives depending on whether the end is merely possible or actual; the latter “pragmatic” imperatives state the requirements for happiness and form “counsels of prudence” rather than moral laws.

• Finally, in pp. 29-32 (Akad. pp. 420-424), Kant begins to consider the possibility of a categorical imperative, a task that will occupy him for most of the rest of the book. He begins with a formulation (recalling that on p. 14, Akad. p. 402) that such an imperative would have to take, notes four duties that follow from it. These are examples of duties to ourselves or to others, and duties that are “perfect” in the sense that they can be fulfilled in only one way or are “imperfect.”