Kant’s Enlightenment: Moral Formalism and Reason
The Kantian Idea of Enlightenment
Germany remained largely outside the main cultural movement in Europe. There are three important moments in the German Enlightenment: Enlightenment was first limited to the field of philosophy of law. The elevation of German Enlightenment rationalism made some German philosophers start to bury this position as too simple to explain the human phenomenon. The reason is not primary, but rather derived from other dimensions of human life.
Kant links dogmatism and skepticism with rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism provides an adequate method of ensuring the evidence of intuitive knowledge; reason will be modeled on the intuitive-deductive method of mathematics. Kant points out the danger that reason, for all purposes, likes to know apart from experience. Kant believes that Hume’s empiricism is necessary to stop rationalist dogmatism. Knowledge is not deductive but inductive inference. In the critical stage of reason, the author takes the criticism of the state of science. The critical philosophy is the science of pure reason and knowledge, vertebra in three questions:
- What can I know?: Metaphysical, objective knowledge work Critique of Pure Reason.
- What should I do?: Moral, action, Critique of Practical Reason.
- What can I expect?: Religion, meaning / purpose of human life, Critique of Judgement, Perpetual Peace.
The Moral Formalism
What is man? The theoretical use of reason in its theoretical use is aimed at knowledge of objects or phenomena given by experience. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason analyzes a priori laws that allow the right to build universal and necessary judgments about how the objects behave.
Practical use of reason believes that the moral law must be objective, universal, and necessary. It is the human will which autonomously wants the action to the moral law of reason prescribes. There are two types of ethics:
- Material: that we have something concrete to get to happiness, is a posteriori, empirical, its precepts are conditional or hypothetical and is heteronomous, the moral imperative is external to the individual.
- Formal: is empty of particular content, tells us how we should act, is governed by the categorical imperative and is autonomous, the subject is determined to act himself.
Moral action and responsibility distinguishes three kinds of action: contrary to duty, under duty (field of law), and duty (field of morality). The moral subject is free to choose; we act out of respect for law (duty). The action is an end in itself, is not conditional, and acts motivated by goodwill.
The categorical imperative (formal) which is governed by the formal ethics is a set of principles:
- Self: do what your conscience tells you and not others or the laws.
- Reliability: meets the obligation of duty.
- Necessity and universality: always work so that the maxim of your will can be elevated to universal law enforcement.
- Respect for the person: work so that you treat others as ends and not as a means to achieve other objectives.