Moral Philosophy: Crusius And Kant

Before Kant, moral philosophy was dominated by Crusius’s sense of divine morality which stipulates that the will of a person has to be in accordance with the will of God. Wolff’s notion of moral perfection adds that we should strive to procedurally achieve our sense of moral obligation to the degree that the ends or effects of a particular action are based on our ability to calculate perfection. Kant concludes that Wolff’s postulates are virtually impossible in attempting perfection in 1764 in his Prize Essay ,‘‘now I can with little effort show how I became convinced, after much thought, that the rule ‘do the most perfect action which for you is possible’. ’’ (Prize Essay.2:229) Crusius and Wolff’s arguments essentially appeal to the un-provable

Kant at various places says that the formulas of the CI are equivalent, but he also often treats them as separate principles (referring to my third chapter).CI1 and CI2 are equivalent in a sense that CI1 plus a rational requirement to treat one’s own humanity as an end in itself entails CI2. However, CI1 and CI2 (as I understand it) could be separate principles. By itself, CI1 does not specify the standards of rational willing that determine whether a person could accept a moral principle or not, it basically requires us to act in ways that are justifiable to others. CI2 is a principle requiring humanity in oneself and others to be treated as an end in itself, which would be the Kant’s intention of moral content to refute the emptiness

Critiques of Kantian moral philosophy on the basis of emptiness come from a variety of thinkers and from many different schools of thought. For example, Mill claims the universal law permits commonly immoral behavior and can only become consistent by resorting to Utilitarianism. ‘‘All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur’’ (Mill.Uti.162). Mill criticizes Kant for failing to identify ‘‘the actual duties of morality’’ (Mill.Uti.162). Mill’s critique derives from the Introduction of Utilitarianism, where he makes the claim that Kantian ethics, and all a priori abstract concept of ethics, derive from first principles (Kant’s the CI) that go unstated, leaving an actual description of action as elusive, and thus the prescriptive ethical determinations derived from the CI unable to inform action (Mill,