There is … only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should bec… - Immanuel Kant

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

What then is it which justifies virtue or the morally good disposition, in making such lofty claims? It is nothing less than the privilege it secures to the rational being of participating in the giving of universal laws, by which it qualifies him to be a member of a possible kingdom of ends, a privilege to which he was already destined by his own nature as being an end in himself, and on that account legislating in the kingdom of ends; free as regards all laws of physical nature, and obeying those only which he himself gives, and by which his maxims can belong to a system of universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself. For nothing has any worth except what the law assigns it.

This problem is the most difficult and the last to be solved by mankind.