KANT OPINION ON EMOTIONS EVALUATION

Kant suggested that in order to make good moral judgments we need to be devoid of emotion. Critically evaluate this suggestion

Kant suggested that in order to make good moral judgments we need to be devoid of emotion. Critically evaluate this suggestion

Introduction

Innate emotional bases of ethics have been proposed by authors in evolutionary psychology, Philosophers often tend to view such theories as irrelevant to, or even as tending to undermine, the project of moral philosophy. But the importance of emotions to early moral learning gives them a role to play in determining the content of morality. Evolutionary psychologists and others thinking in scientific terms about the sources of morality sometimes hark back to eighteenth-century British moral philosophy, which works from a conception of innate human nature. In this article, I analyse Kant's theory of emotions, and Kant's personal life aspects as to moral emotions.

Discussion

To start, Immanuel Kant is known for his work in the philosophical field of ethics. He was famous for his idea of “ethical duty”, which is the argument that our moral actions should be in complete accordance with duty. He also believed that we could discover this duty through reason. Kant asserts throughout his famous book, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

Before going on to an account and discuss Katan theory and opinion of emotions and the importance of Kantian principles in one's moral life, it would be better to take a look at rigorous and other aspects in Kant's ethics. The major are as follows:-

Absence of Practical directives:

Kant's ethics is formal. It gives very little advice on practical subjects. At some stages, it is possible to discern what ought not be done but not what ought to be done. This has been adequately-illustrated in the foregoing criticism of moral maxims for moral conduct.

Rigorous

The most noticeable feature of Kantian ethics is rigorous, which takes two forms. First, Kant does not want to accord a place to emotion is moral life and second, Kant does not allow any exception in moral laws. 

In Kant's opinion, action allowing any exception is incorrect. A person is undoubtedly immoral if he cries or is pained by another's pain or sorrow because in the process he increases the weight of sorrow in the world. It is for him to decrease the distress of others and not be sorrowful at their pain.

According to Kant, every act should be done by the motive purely of duty. Besides this activity carried out with some feeling be it as high or lofty as it may, is rather immoral.

Kant did not intend to convey that it is bad for some emotion to accompany the practical reason his meaning being that the motivation of action should come from reason, not from emotion.

Thus, this opinion is irrational asceticism but rational rigorous.

In real life, a person sorrowful due to other's sorrow can not be declared bad. Emotion is man's weakness but man is man due to that as he would otherwise have been either god or animal, and until man becomes either or two the value of emotion, in moral life ...