Introduction: Kant’s Categorical Imperative and the Emptiness Charge in Kant’s Moral Philosophy Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy is mostly remembered for its central thesis, the Categorical Imperative (CI). According to Kant, rational beings experience the moral law as a Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative commands universally and unconditionally, from which all duties are derived. Kant articulates the Categorical Imperative through several formulations. The most prominent formulations of the Categorical Imperative are known as the Formula of Universal Law (CI1), the Humanity Formulation (CI2) and the Kingdom of Ends Formulation (CI3).
In his famous work “The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals” Kant tries to develop a moral philosophy which depends on fundamental concepts of reason and tries to show that while making moral choices we should use reason. Kant, as an Enlightenment philosopher, places all his confidence in reason. In the first chapter, we generally recognized that an action is moral if and only if it is performed for the sake of duty. Duty commands itself as imperative. There are two types of imperatives as hypothetical and categorical.
He was greatly influenced by Aristotle, David Hume, and Plato. His main interests were epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Kant made the basis for an ethical law from the concept of duty. Kant believed that people should obey the law no matter what their morals are. When we pay taxes, we can use the categorical imperative theory.
He links the use of reason with freedom and this use of reason helped us achieve a system of morals. However, Nietzsche disagrees with Kant and mocked the idea that using reason can help us since reason is something created by man and his view of the world, therefore none of these concepts can have true meaning. He wanted to know how and why did such morals come to have this value and this is how through the use of Nietzsche’s philosophy, I will critique Kant’s moral
Kant’s transcendental idealism is kind of empirical realism in that he holds the manifestations of objects have objective validity, that is, the object is not given experiential characteristics other than a thing in it, that allowing for lawful experience is the essential expression of the transcendental aesthetic which Kant emphasizes in Groundwork and throughout his moral
According to Kant, the categorical imperative is “what makes a will good is its conformity with the moral law”. His categorical imperative is a deontological ethical theory, which denotes the idea of existence
Another section covers issues of a metaphysics of morals. The philosopher chastises the idea of beginning moral judgment with empirical scrutiny. The last part is intended to explain that people have a free will, hence they are able to establish their moral compass and consider an acceptable form of
Firstly, Kant’s ethics of duty is defined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant, I method to ethics is to shed lights on what humans are capable of doing which is necessarily our motives and intentions, we cannot be entirely responsible for our actions because it might be effected by accidental circumstances. However, the action is right and good only if the person doing it is motivated by ‘good will’ which applies to the actions done for reasons of principle or sense of duty, not self-interest, sympathy or kindness. Furthermore, Kant’s categorical imperative is the best known expression of his ethical approach, it applies to a
For Nietzsche „Each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution, which defines him as a particular type of person”, in this sense, substance must be understood and as consequence, people’s actions are determined by their non-conscious-type facts. On this basis, he argues the issue of free will. The „moralities” which he criticises, admit the presupposition that the agent is morally responsible because he/she has free will, but Nietzsche argues that for this to be valid, he/she would have to be causa sui (self-caused, or the cause of itself – see Kant). As each person is a type, and his/her type is predetermined, it cannot be self- caused; therefore free will does not exist. Will, for Nietzsche, is basically a raw impulse, the effect of type-facts, an impulse of life underscored by Eros, which is reaffirming and which he calls Will to Power, a concept which I will contextualize later on in this segment.
According to Kant’s Deontological theory, it would be morally permissible to institute an opt-out policy for cadaveric organ donation. Kant’s Deontological theory is formulated from the Categorical Imperative (CI), also known as the Principle of Practical Reason. The CI is based on a fundamental principle that states that moral actions “ought” to be carried out if the intention behind that action is what is ‘right’. That is, moral actions are “discerned by reason”, regardless of the consequences that arise from the action. The principle also considers that such moral actions are imperative since human beings have desires, predispositions and deviate from being “perfectly rational”.