De Almeida's Portuguese translation of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten is based on the second edition of the text (Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1786), which the book reproduces on its even pages. The translator has chosen the second edition because it was corrected by Kant himself, and indicates within the Portuguese version the pagination of the first edition (Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1785, in its facsimile edition Kant im Original, Erlangen: Harald Fisher, 1984) as well as the changes between the two versions (which are indicated and translated in the notes). The edition also indicates the pagination of the Akademie edition.

De Almeida's notes to his Portuguese translation (662 in total) are given at the end of each section of the text, and actually constitute a useful and thoroughly elaborated apparatus criticus. De Almeida offers there several justifications for his translation decisions. A quite exhaustive philological research and de Almeida's own philosophical analysis of Kant's moral philosophy and the Kantian corpus in general help to support them. The philological accuracy of the Portuguese text is soundly reached by constant reference to the usage of German in Kant's times, Kant's other works and to several classic translations of the Grundlegung into other languages, which are the French version translated by V. Delbos, the English versions by Th. Abbot, H. Paton, L. W. Beck, M. Gregor and A. Wood, and the Portuguese versions by P. Quintela and L. Henkel, as well as the Latin version by F. G. Born. It is to be noticed, however, that de Almeida does not refer to any Spanish version of the work, such as the classic one by M. García Morente.

His proposals for the translation of the Kantian vocabulary, which can be found at the end of the book in two ‘Glossaries’ (a ‘German–Portuguese’ one on pp. 431–64 and a ‘Portuguese–German’ one on pp. 465–501) will surely serve as academic guidelines for the translation of other Kantian texts into Portuguese. The translator's successful effort to maintain the Portuguese version of the Grundlegung as faithful as possible to the German original (he even keeps the text's own ambiguities when rendering them in Portuguese) is also something to be highlighted given the considerable and obvious linguistic distance between late eighteenth-century German and a contemporary Romance language.

De Almeida's Introduction (11–55) constitutes an insightful study of the Grundlegung considered as a project for the foundation of morality on critical a priori grounds that is inscribed within the wider Critical enterprise as well as within the framework of Kant's discussion with the history of moral philosophy. De Almeida presents a reading of the work as a whole, that is to say, he exhibits its internal coherence, mainly from a methodological point of view. Indeed, the methodological standpoint of de Almeida's study of this revolutionary Kantian work offers an illuminating rendering of Kant's progress in the argumentation orientated towards the ‘general purpose’ of the Grundlegung – ‘seeking and establishing the supreme principle of morality’ (15), that takes into account the polemic substratum of Kant's opposition to Garve's ‘popular philosophy’. Being developed from the aforementioned perspective, the comprehensive elaboration of this study is commendable insofar as it highlights the specificity of the argumentative structure of the text as a conceptual unity and as it shows the strong logical interconnection between each of its sections. De Almeida's strategy offers, thus, a profound understanding of the Grundlegung's main positive thesis, as well as of the traditionally ‘not well received’ (‘não … bem acolhida’, 44) synthetic deduction of its third section.

The Introduction also articulates a clear panorama of the meaning of ‘metaphysics’ in the phrase ‘metaphysics of morals’. Although this panorama does not include Kant's own definition of this phrase in KrV, A841/B869, which is of great significance for the understanding of Kant's metaphysics of morals as a system containing those normative principles that ‘a priori determine and make necessary action and omission’ (‘das Thun und Lassen a priori bestimmen und nothwendig machen’) – that is to say, a system that it is neither only nor merely concerned with the a priori principles ‘of moral judgments in general’ (‘dos juízos morais em geral’, 13; my emphasis) – it lucidly emphasizes the validity of the Grundlegung even in our ‘post-metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’ times (11–15). Lastly, the Introduction ends with a problem left open for the readers to appraise. Relating the Grundlegung's project to the second Kritik's negation of the possibility of a deduction of the supreme principle of morality, the author poses the unsolved question of whether the Faktum der Vernunft is ‘a relapse into dogmatism or a real advance in the project of the Grundlegung’ (‘uma recaída no dogmatismo, ou um avanço real do projeto da Fundamentação’, 49). In spite of the fact that De Almeida's study does not treat the further development of Kant's general moral philosophy and the new formulation of the supreme principle of ethics (MS 395) as presented in Die Metaphysik der Sitten – for which the Grundlegung and the second Kritik were intended to be propaedeutics – De Almeida's final question testifies to the fact that he does not try to conceal the intrinsic and usually overlooked complexity of the Kantian beginning of the quest for a pure rational foundation for morality. This constitutes, in my view, one of the many virtues of his Introduction.

Concerning the overall edition of the book, I should mention that a list of the seminal bibliography on this work and on Kant's moral philosophy and a subject index listing the different concepts and notions developed in it would have been useful for the reader and would have completed de Almeida's presentation of the text. However, the absence of these does not affect the outstanding quality of the reviewed book. For, in sum, the publication of this bilingual edition of Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten – Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes is an occasion to be celebrated. Because of de Almeida's academic rigour, this Portuguese version of one of Kant's most read and studied works will be useful not only for students but also for scholars, and so constitutes a great contribution to Kantian studies and to the promotion of Kant's philosophy in the Lusophone and Hispanophone research fields.