Kant and Morality

Introduction

The main ideas of Kant's critical philosophy are prefigured in the life and work of Socrates, as he defends himself in the Apology against accusations of impiety and corrupting the youth. Is the unexamined life worth living? Should questioning the foundations of conventional beliefs be a crime? Should we value wealth and power more than wisdom? Is it a good idea to replace human wisdom with someone's claim to superhuman wisdom? Socrates makes it clear, through his distinctive method and by his personal example, that there are no satisfactory answers to these questions unless we take a critical approach to experience. A critical attitude is at the heart of philosophy from the beginning.

The three Principles

Universal Law

The first of Kant's principles of morality may be called the universal law or maxim. Kant claims that the basic principle of morality should be that individuals should act in such a way that they could want their maxim (motivation for acting) to be universal. This led Kant to describe such a universal maxim as a "categorical imperative." This simply means that all individuals should act in such a way that they would wish all others to follow the same guiding principle (Rawls, 102).

Treat Humans as Ends

The second of Kant's principles claims that a person should never treat another person as a means to an end. He separates individuals and objects into two categories: means and ends. Humans, he claims, should always be thought of as ends, or autonomous individuals with their own goals and desires. Treating others as ends promotes equality, because each person recognizes the other as an individual. For example, an individual must treat other individual equally, and must recognize his rights. He or she must not use the other person for the completion of his or her own work only (Rawls, 1116).

Kingdom of End is a Rational Agent

Because all of Kant's moral conclusions came from reasoning and a priori conclusions, he felt that all rational beings ought to be able to come to the same moral conclusions that he did. Therefore, his third moral principle is that his moral conclusions are universally available to all rational agents, who can use mental faculties to come to the same principles (Gert, 57). Kant argued that all humans should be thought of in this way, as capable of arriving at moral conclusions through the process of reasoning.

Discussion

Kant highlighted that that moral judgments are projections of what this world would be like if everyone behaved morally (Thagard, 405); they are not projections of the proper order of things in a world different from the one we know. Moral questions are about what is right to do in this world, not about what to do in preparation for the next world. It is reasonable to hope that moral actions will be rewarded, but it is not reasonable to bank on it based on some dubious claim to knowledge (Rawls, 515).

How do people act in the moral world? What are the imperatives they take seriously? ...