Immanuel Kant, like his predecessors John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, believed that morality was based on standards of rationality. His influential work, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, argues for the existence of a "founding principle of a metaphysics of morality." Such a principle, he asserts, must account for three propositions of morality: only actions performed out of duty have true moral value; moral value derives from the maxim that their action implies, not from the goal that must be achieved. thanks to it, and that a duty is an obligation to act in a specific way in accordance with the law.2 Kant calls this founding principle the categorical imperative. Kant's categorical imperative is a method of determining the morality of an action based on whether the action is objectively necessary, and is the first of two types of imperatives. Such action is good in itself, not just as a means to achieve some other goal. Because Kant believes that everyone possesses a rational will, the categorical imperative applies to everyone, guiding them to act in the same way, regardless of their circumstances or prejudices. It does not take into account the consequences of an act and only judges moral or immoral based on intentions. One such imperative is “Do not lie,” which, according to Kant, is a true maxim in all cases. The categorical imperative is based on the sole notion that one must act solely on the basis of maxims that can reasonably and without contradiction become a universal law. As such, it does not take into account the details of circumstances and is universally valid, as it is based solely on a priori concepts. I will explain Kant’s formulations of this imperative in more detail in a moment. Now that we have seen the first type of imperative,...... middle of paper ......aw. Kant rewrites this concept of universalizing maxims to determine duty in a second formulation which, while testing actions differently, leads according to him to the same moral conclusions. The second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative is "to act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of others, always as an end and never merely as a means." This principle aims to characterize as immoral behaviors that use humanity simply as a means to achieve their own ends. This is not to say that using people as a means is always wrong, but simply that their humanity must be simultaneously recognized as an end. In the example maxim “I will deliberately make empty promises for my own well-being” used above, this action remains impermissible in terms of the second formulation. moral/