The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is considered to be a central figure of contemporary philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts, structure human experience and that reason is the foundation of morality. In Kant’s 1784 essay “What is Enlightenment” he briefly outlined his opinions on what Enlightenment is, the difficulties to enlightenment and how individuals attain enlightenment. Kant defined enlightenment as “Man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage” (Kant 1) and the “Courage to use his own reason.
In today’s society, free thinking seems to be a principle less and less broached upon. The average citizen does very little as far as discovery and development. Instead, we listen to others to know what to believe. Education tells us what is supposedly true and religion lets many know what to believe and how to act.
Where our choices should include everyone, as universal to be considered moral or immoral. His choice would be based on the common sense rather than what one feels on the time on having to choose. Kant believes in continuacion of life, where maintaining life is a moral action. In Rescue I we have to see who really is in danger, where all 6 people are in danger, how can you morally save five and kill one. We will have to follow one of the two wills which are autonomous: morality of respect to us having free will and heteronomous: respecting others morality.
Categorical Imperatives are rules you absolutely have to follow, which does not include your religious outlook, your desires, and or moral obligations. There are two famous rules/laws that we can identify and use in this case. The first one is “Act such that the maximum (principal) of your action can be willed to become universal law.” What Kant is saying here is we should only take action that can be
Personally, I believe that Immanuel Kant had the greatest impact on the enlightenment. His writings opened the minds of individuals allowing them to realize that they can think for themselves. Kant writes about something he calls the “guardians”and self-incurred tutelage, Private and public use of reason, and civil freedom. In Immanuel Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment” he writes about “self-incurred tutelage”.
The author Immanuel Kant starts by answering the question of “What is Enlightenment?”, as the title suggests. In his essay he discusses the absence of true enlightenment and the reasons for this absence and what is needed from a person to be enlightened. According to Kant the definition of enlightenment is a person’s emergence from immaturity that he or she imposes on the self. For Kant immaturity means the person’s inability to use his or her judgment and understanding of things to make decisions, and the reliance on people’s opinions to make these decisions. Kant further explains that the reason for this immaturity is the dependence and reliance on others for help so much that thinking and acting alone becomes very difficult.
Are we enlightened today? To answer this question first we need to define enlightenment. Immanuel Kant saw enlightenment as freeing individuals from the social and especially from religious rules and restrictions, as ability to reasoning and think without someone’s direction. Of course most of the people would say that we achieved a lot since the XVIII century in terms of the freedom. We fought for abolishing slavery, women’s rights, rights to vote and be educated, to have property and choose religion, rights to have freedom.
Disagreements are a common aspect to our mundane life, due to our own personal biases where we strongly believe the validity surrounding our perception and as a result we are willing to give into conflict in order to show evidence that our opponent’s arguments are invalid. That being said, disagreements are necessary in the process of establishing facts, specifically within areas of knowledge such as the natural sciences and history. Facts contain simple knowledge, where they tend to have a close correlation with theories, as one derives from another. As stated by Immanuel Kant, “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. " The facts that we all have access to can be considered valid since they provide a foundation for theories to be developed further with continuous experimentation.
Life: Kant was born in Koenigsberg, Prussia in 1724. He is a German philosopher, who is considered the most influential thinker of the Enlightenment era and is one of the greatest Western philosopher of all times. His works on Epistemology ( the theory of knowledge ), Aesthetics and Ethics had a great influence on all philosophers, but especially on the different schools of Kantianism and Idealism. In him were excluded new trends that had begun with the rationalism of Rene Descartes and the empiricism of Francis Bacon. Immanuel Kant was born to Johann Georg Cant and his wife Anna Regina Cant.
ENLIGHTENMENT FROM PAST TO PRESENT In this dark environment, where we are in our country, we are the days when we are most needed to become enlightened and conscious. One of the most important representatives of the German Enlightenment, Kant's article entitled "What is Enlightenment" can give us some ideas. The situation described in the problem of enlightenment emerged as follows. Previously, people perceived morality by their orders of divine power, not by themselves, but by a rule maker. Kant calls this stage a prey.
I hope to convince the reader that Kant’s Categorical Imperative is the better way to live a morally conscious life and more practical to follow as well. First I will briefly describe both Kant’s and Mill’s principles. Then I will go on to explain the advantages and disadvantages of both. Finally, I hope to provide a counterargument for some of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives downfalls. Kant states the Categorical Imperative as: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will and general natural law."
Using Kant’s notion of a maxim it would be wrong to cheat on the final exam in a course that you do not like and feel you will not benefit from. In the book it stated this, “Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that lying is wrong under any circumstances. He did not appeal to religion; instead, he held that lying is forbidden by reason itself” (Rachels 129). This shows that no matter what the situation may be that lying is looked down upon. He believed that every rational person should believe the Categorical Imperative.
Immanuel Kant was born by his mother, Regina Reuter on April 22, 1724. This was the start of a young man that would change the history of ethics forever. His mother had no idea that he would grow into a man that would be overjoyed with his love for philosophy. Nor could she have ever guessed that he would create one of the most influential philosophical and ethical concepts in history, now known as Kantian Ethics. Today just about every Western philosophy is in some way connected to the influence that Immanuel Kant had on the history of philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics.
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) was a Prussian philosopher who spent his entire adult life both in academia and in the town of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) (Rohlf, 2016). He was raised in Pietism – an evangelical branch of Lutheranism emphasising personal faith and enlightenment, and pursuing social and educational agendas (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.a). However, he rebelled against its teachings, perhaps influencing his subsequent predilection for reason rather than faith. His parents were both artisans, and he was also immersed in artisan values such as honesty and hard work.
To answer this question, Kant goes into the explanation of his work on categorical imperative. According to Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy categorical imperative is the “general principle that demands that one respect the humanity in oneself and in others” (Immanuel Kant, 2018). Regarding the topic of Ethics, Immanuel Kant expresses his believes that we should all respect each other and oneself. As a society we need to follow the moral law. Our duty as society is act rationally, with keeping in mind the universal moral law.
