Kant and the Good Action

I’m reading a biography of Beethoven by Jan Swafford, and in painting the sociological background of Beethoven’s world and times Swafford writes of the huge influence of the philosopher Immanuel Kant:

For Kant, the moral part came down to what he called the “categorical imperative”: every person must act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”. Every act should be done with the conviction that if everyone did likewise, life would be good. 

So the very first action to look at to see if it matches up to the idea of one’s behavior amounting to a universal law for all is Kant’s act of writing a book of philosophy. And so we see that apparently every living person should write books of philosophy - otherwise this act of writing a book of philosophy doesn’t constitute a maxim of universal law, and is a self-contradictory piece of thought at its very root. Otherwise, armed with this code of behaviour, you don’t go one step without gong wrong. So everyone should write books of philosophy, and then life would be good. As an aside, who will read all these books, I wonder, that we should be all spending much of our time creating?

Extending this, a bit of dialogue comes to mind:

“Hi Immanuel, how are things?”

“Oh good, good.”

“You know who’s i met earlier?”

“Who?”

“Joseph. Joseph Bosch.”

“What’s he up to?”

“He seems to be doing well. He’s a shoemaker now.”

“Everyone should be a shoemaker!”

“Really?!”

“Of course! Goodness and freedom are at stake here, you fool!”