Immanuel Kant’s Moral Philosophy

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Introduction

In this paper, I will focus on the Moral philosophy of Emmanuel Kant. Moral philosophy signifies a branch of philosophy that contemplates what is wrong and right. It examines how individuals ought to live their lives with others and deals with the nature of morality. Immanuel Kant was a German thinker and among the main enlightenment philosophers. His systematic and comprehensive works in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics have made him among the most influential personalities in contemporary Western philosophy. Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy is a deontological normative philosophy, which denotes the discards the utilitarian notion that the correctness of an act is a function of how productive its aftermath is. He asserts that the means (or motive), and not the outcome, of action determines its moral value. Kant’s moral philosophy is based on the idea that: “It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a goodwill.” According to this philosophy, the wrongness or rightness of actions does not depend on their outcomes but on whether they accomplish our duty.

Immanuel Kant’s idea of moral philosophy

Immanuel Kant believed that there was an utmost principle of morality, and he termed it as The Categorical Imperative. He urged that the greatest principle of morality is a standard of rationality. Every particular moral need, according to Kant, is warranted by this principle, which denotes that all immoral actions are irrational for the reason that they violate the Categorical Imperative. He categorized the Categorical Imperative as an unconditional principle, rationally necessary and an objective that we should at all-time follow regardless of any inclinations or natural desires we might have to the contrary. All precise moral necessities, according to Kant, are vindicated by this standard, which signifies that all immoral deeds are illogical since they violate the Categorical Imperative. Other theorists, such as Locke, Aquinas, and Hobbes, had also reasoned that moral needs are built on values of rationality. Though, these values were either instrumental ethics of rationality for fulfilling one’s yearnings, as in Hobbes, or exterior rational values that are realizable by reason, as in Aquinas and Locke. Kant approved with several of his precursors that an examination of practical reason divulges the necessity that rational agents ought to conform to contributory doctrines.

His notion of the right manner of treating individuals is specified using a positive proclamation. Kant asserts, “Treat others as though the maxim by which you are acting will become a universal law of nature.” In other words, he signifies that we ought to treat others the same way we would have the universe treat us. Kant avows, consequently, that any lack of action or any action, if done devoid of goodwill, is immoral hence making it irrational. In another way, he asserts that for a deed to be moral, it ought to be resultant from a rational will. If imperatives disagree, he evaluates them against each other. The one that has the supreme moral will is the one that ought to be acted upon reasonably. Kant does not say this is simple or easy. An individual needs to act devoid of thinking of the outcomes, only if the maxim driving the inaction/action would in a universalized way generate non-contradictory and rational fallouts.

On the other hand, he also argued that conformism to the non-instrumental principle, and therefore to ethical requirements, can all the same be shown to be vital to rational agency. This dispute was founded on his striking principle that rational willpower needs to be viewed as free, or autonomous, in the logic of being the writer of the rule that binds it. The major principle of morality — categorical imperative — is none other than the act of a self-governing will. Therefore, at the heart of his moral idea is a formation of motive whose reach in practical matters goes so well past that of a Humean slave to the desires. Furthermore, it is the existence of this independent reason in every individual that Kant thinking gave conclusive bases for seeing each one as possessed of deserving equal respect and of equal worth.

His most powerful positions in moral philosophy are established in The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Ethics, but he advanced, improved, and in several cases changed those opinions in later works, for instance, The Metaphysics of Morals, The Critique of Practical Reason, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in addition to his theses on related topics and history. Kant’s assessment of the general moral ideas of goodwill and duty led him to trust that we are autonomous and free provided that morality, itself, is not a delusion. On the other hand, he claimed that his moral philosophy needs the immortality of the soul and belief in free will, God. According to him, even though we cannot have an understanding of these things, reflection on the moral law results in justified credence in them, which sums to a kind of rational faith. Kant asserted that we might have faith that our souls are immortal and that there certainly is a God who made the universe in accordance with ideologies of justice.

Kant supposed that the only manner to resolve this ostensible dispute is to differentiate between a phenomenon, which is something we recognize through experience, and noumena, which we can reliably contemplate but not recognize through experience. Our understanding and knowledge of the experiential world, Kant debated, can only come within the confines of our cognitive powers and perceptual. Kant urges that the basic principle of our ethical sense of responsibilities is a categorical imperative. It is an imperative for the reason that it is a rule addressed to agents who may perhaps trail it. It is categorical in feature of applying to us categorically, or merely because we have rational willpowers, without allusion to whichever ends that we may or may not have. It does not, in other arguments, relate to us on the reason that we have antecedently espoused some objective for ourselves.

Conclusion

Kant’s moral theory is normally referred to as the ‘respect for persons’ theory of morality. He takes his fundamental moral principle the Cognitive Imperative since it suggests that moral motives dominate other sorts of motives. He retorts that we do our moral responsibility when our reason is determined by a principle recognized by motive other than the need for any expected result or emotional feeling which might be the foundation of us acting the way we do.

Bibliography

Christensen, Anne-Marie Søndergaard. Moral Philosophy and Moral Life. Oxford University Press, USA, 2021.

Hill, Thomas E. “Dignity and practical reason in Kant’s moral theory.” (2020).

Kant, Immanuel. Kant: The metaphysics of morals. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Lanigan, Richard L. “Immanuel Kant on the philosophy of communicology: The tropic logic of rhetoric and semiotics.” Semiotica 2019, no. 227 (2019): 273-315.

Paulsen, Friedrich. Immanuel Kant. BoD–Books on Demand, 2017.

Pavlova, Tetiana, Elena Zarutska, Roman Pavlov, and Oleksandra Kolomoichenko. “Ethics and law in Kant’s views: the principle of complementarity.” International Journal of Ethics and Systems (2019).