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Immanual Kant's Idea Of Dignity

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Immanual Kant’s philosophy puts a single idea above all else: the idea of dignity. Everything revolves around the philosophy that humans are autonomous creatures worthy of dignity, and all interaction between people should have dignity at the center of it. He also highly values doing the right thing for the right reasons, and not because it leads to a desirable outcome or positive feeling. Kantian thought leads to some interesting scenarios that put it head-to-head with compassionate thought. For example, there is no such thing as a white lie in Kantian thought. If a child gets you a gift and you honestly don’t like it, Kantian thought tells you to tell them the truth, because to lie to them and say you like the gift wouldn’t treat them with dignity. This creates a problem when …show more content…

For example, a murderer is at your house and asks you where your wife is. To lie to him would save your wife’s life, but you’re supposed to tell the truth because to not do so would be to deny the murderer their dignity. In Kantian thinking, the moral thing to do would be to tell the murderer. He says the duty to tell the truth is more important than any of the consequences. Weird, right? Interestingly, there’s a loophole. This is an example from the book, but I really liked it: The Clinton Loophole. During Bill Clinton’s infamous sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinsky, he echoed the words “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” over and over. Well, did he? By dictionary definition, no. He didn’t fulfill the qualifications to call it sex. Therefore, he didn’t have sexual relations with her. He didn’t lie. What he did do was have her perform oral sex acts on him. That technically isn’t sexual relations, but it still is wrong. Although Bill gets a pass on the misleading statements, Kant believes anything other than normal sex between two married people is immoral, so he still gets docked as a bad person by

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