Tentative Answer: Kant's Morals in Comparison

The epicenter of Kant's ethics lies in the categorical imperative, which implores people to "act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law" (34). Preceding this statement is an extensive commentary on the nature of something that is categorical—i.e. it must be done concerning the form and principle of action itself, not the matter or consequences of it. So the most significant takeaway from Kant's formulation is a focus on willpower, as opposed to real material consequence.

This philosophy runs in direct contradiction to the worldview of Machiavelli, whose emphasis on reputation presupposes the importance of the consequences of one's actions, rather than the motives guiding them. Machiavelli instructs rulers to perform in a way that sheds a good light on them, discarding any concern for genuine intent. Kant would frown upon this: a moral base founded on materialist philosophy is unreliable and unable to be extrapolated into universal terms.

I think that Kant's morality most closely resembles Plato, in that his talking about human instruction through immaterial, rational terms parallels Plato's emphasis on the world of Forms. Plato's Good is strikingly similar to Kant's idea of good will, in that they are both perfect abstractions that do not have a basis on empirical evidence, but can help to guide and inform human rational action. The discursive patterns within the philosophical tradition, constructed from undulations in thought between the rational and the empirical, make for interesting resonances between texts spaced so temporally far apart.