Maxims and the Role of Moral Principles

I criticise a recent defence of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law by Sven Nyholm. Nyholm argues that alleged false positives/negatives that would constitute counterexamples to the FUL can be discarded since they are not maxims in Kant’s sense. However, Nyholm’s rereading of maxims rather reveals a fundamental problem for Kant: It is unclear why we need a universalization procedure for maxims at all. Some maxims are clearly permissible and others are vague such that only a better understanding of the central terms they contain, not a hypothetical universalization, would help us to morally evaluate them. Finally, I argue that even if we do not think that the CI formulae are supposed to inform us about right and wrong, the problem persists.