Abstract
In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant presented a method for discovering what morality requires us to do in any situation
and claimed that it is a method everyone can use. The method consists in testing one's maxim against the requirement stated in the formulations of
the categorical imperative. There has been endless discussion of the adequacy of Kant's method in giving moral guidance, but there has been little effort to situate Kant's view of ethical method in its historical context. In this paper I try to do so.
I take the label "method of ethics" from the work of Henry Sidgwick.
A method of ethics, he says, is any rational procedure by which we
determine what it is right for an individual to do or what an individual
ought to do. Since the moralists I want to consider do not all think of
morality as rational, I shall broaden the notion by saying that a method
is any systematic or regular procedure, rational or not, by which we
determine what morality requires...