Immanuel Kant: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Categorical Imperative
Kant’s Philosophical Context
Kant is the greatest eighteenth-century German philosopher and one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Enlightenment. Note the huge task that Kant intends: criticism, subjecting theoretical reason and practical reason to rigorous scrutiny. As a result of this, he will bring a dazzling synthesis of rationalism and empiricism as far as theoretical reason is concerned, and a new ethical theory, formalism, which breaks all previous approaches. Such amount of contributions will exert a considerable influence on all subsequent philosophical activity, and to this day. But leaving aside the philosophical perspective, we must highlight the role played by Kant in his time. His reflections on practical aspects such as history, politics, or religion were discussed at the time, and Kant was one of the most influential figures in the European intellectual landscape of the eighteenth century. Therefore, Kant is undoubtedly one of the most influential authors of all modernity and has become an essential reference point in such diverse areas as ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history.
Responsibility
According to Kant, humans only act morally when we do so out of duty. He defines duty as “the need for action out of respect for the law.” This means that acting morally means submitting to a law, not by the utility or satisfaction that compliance can provide, but for the respect that any law deserves because that is our duty.
Kant distinguishes between actions contrary to duty and actions that must conform to duty. Only the latter have moral value. A politician who tells the truth acts according to duty. But that does not mean he acts morally: he can do so only to win votes, which is what interests him. According to Kant, the politician acts morally when telling the truth because that is his duty, whether they win or lose votes by doing so. The action done from duty is not a means to an end, but something that must be done by itself. The moral value of an action does not depend on the purpose or aim to achieve, but the maxim, motive, or intention that inspires it, provided that the intent matches the duty: “An action done from duty has its moral value, not in order that through it one wants to achieve, but the maxim for which it has been decided, not therefore depends on the existence of the subject of the action, but merely the beginning of the will.”
The Categorical Imperative
Unlike hypothetical imperatives of the ethics materials, the exigencies of moral action under formal ethics are categorical. One formulation of the categorical imperative is: “Act only on a maxim such that you can at the same time will to become universal law.” This requirement does not establish any specific rule, but the outline or shape that you take any of the rules with which we orient ourselves in our concrete behavior. Example: “No appropriation of public money for private gain.” Another formulation is: “Act so that you use humanity, whether in your person and in the person of any other, always as an end at the same time and never merely as a means.” In the two formulations, the requirement of universality is emphasized.
Comparisons with Other Authors: Kant
Ethics and Politics
- Kant, like Plato and Aristotle, believed that ethics and politics must go hand in hand. Kant adds that although the law is required for full development.
Theory of Knowledge
- On the theory of knowledge, the basic concern of modern philosophy, Kant summarizes Hume’s empiricism and the rationalism of Descartes.
- He gives reason to Hume, beginning by noting that all the senses, but also supports, like Descartes, that not everything that is in knowledge comes from experience. This synthesis is known as Kantian criticism, which claims that knowledge is based on a mixture of experience, what he calls “a posteriori,” and what does not come from outside the subject of experience (a priori).
Metaphysics
- As for the concept of metaphysics, Kant gives reason to Hume, saying that metaphysics fails in his attempt to become a science, burying the attempt to match metaphysics with mathematics or physics (sciences), but believes that we cannot condemn it for failing to provide scientific answers to our questions.
- Kant says that metaphysics has become the foundation of morality against Hume’s moral theory: emotivism, which asserts that reason is unable to influence behavior; it is the feelings that prompt us to act one way or another.