Download Immanuel Kant (1724 * 1804)

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)
Kantian Ethics of Duty = Deontological
1. There are objective moral values
2. These principles can be known a priori
3. Moral principles must hold universally
4. Reason alone can deliver knowledge of
principles that hold universally as duties
5. Duties are not hypothetical but categorical
imperatives (nonconditional, nonempirical)
6. Autonomy of the will = moral principle
Foundations / Groundwork
(Grundlegung)
• … therefore, the basis of obligation must not be
sought in the nature of man, or in the
circumstances in the world in which he is
placed, but a priori simply in the conception of
pure reason; and although any other precept
which is founded on principles of mere
experience may be in certain respects universal,
yet in as far as it rests even in the least degree
on an empirical basis, perhaps only as to a
motive, such a precept, while it may be a
practical rule, can never be called a moral law.
The supreme principle of morality
• Nothing can possibly be conceived in the
world, or even out of it, which can be called
good, without qualification, except a good
will.
Good Will = Freedom
• A good will is good not because of what it
performs or effects, not by its aptness for the
attainment of some proposed end, but
simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is
good in itself, and considered by itself is to
be esteemed much higher than all that can
be brought about by it in favor of any
inclination, nay even of the sum total of all
inclinations.
Categorical Imperative
• Freedom of the Will = Autonomy = To act from
Duty (as opposed to “according to duty”)
• Maxim = the subjective principle of volition
• The moral law = the objective principle (that
which would also serve subjectively as a
practical principle to all rational beings if reason
had full power over desire)
• Duty = to act out of respect for the moral law
1st Formula: Universalizability
• There is therefore but one categorical
imperative, namely, this: “Act only on that
maxim whereby thou canst at the same time
will that it should become a universal law.”
• … if there is a categorical imperative (i.e., a law
for the will of every rational being), it can only
command that everything be done from
maxims of one's will regarded as a will which
could at the same time will that it should itself
give universal laws
• Formal, universalizable conception of freedom
2nd Formula: Humanity as an End
• “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own
person or in that of any other, in every case as an
end withal, never as means only.”
• This principle, that humanity and generally every
rational nature is an end in itself (which is the
supreme limiting condition of every man's freedom
of action), is not borrowed from experience, …
because it is universal, applying as it does to all
rational beings, …as an objective end, which must as
a law constitute the supreme limiting condition of all
our subjective ends, … it must therefore spring from
pure reason.