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Kant starts off making two distinctions regarding kinds of knowledge, empirical/rational and formal/material. Empirical or experience-based knowledge is contrasted with rational knowledge, which is independent of experience. This distinction between empirical and rational knowledge rests on a difference in sources of evidence used to support the two different kinds of knowledge. Formal is contrasted with material knowledge. Formal knowledge has no specific subject matter; it is about the general structure of thinking about …

…or happiness. Since all human beings naturally desire happiness, prudential motivation is indirectly motivated by a natural motivation. Moral motivation is the third type of motivation. The action is not only in accord with duty, but motivated by duty, done from duty, or for sake of duty. The agent's motivating reason, the reason for which he acts, is that the action is what morality demands and he wants above all to do what reason demands.