Kant was drawn to philosophy through his interest in natural science, not through moral or political concerns. His systematic interests in practical philosophy were slow in developing, and in the beginning his theoretical discussions of morality were governed less by his substantive moral convictions than by concerns about the grounding of knowledge and the architectonic structure of a system of philosophy. Yet from early in his career, Kant did have distinctive and deeply held moral beliefs, formed partly, no doubt, by his pietistic religious upbringing, but profoundly influenced by modern Enlightenment culture and especially by the writings of Jean- Jacques Rousseau. In the end, Kant's mature thought was grounded on the primacy of the practical, and the critical philosophy is at least as much a moral outlook as it is a position on matters of knowledge, theory, or speculative metaphysics.

Among the works Kant published during the last decade of his life, the emphasis was heavily on practical topics – morality, religion, politics, education, pragmatic anthropology, the final end and historical destiny of the human species. Kant's critical writings on practical philosophy, here collected for the first time in a single volume, are equal in importance and influence to anything else in his philosophy, even the Critique of Pure Reason.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORAL THEORY: 1762–81

At the end of 1762 Kant submitted to the Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences a prize essay, Inquiry concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals (in the competition it finished second to an essay by Moses Mendelssohn).