Immanuel Kant Essay Research Paper Meetesh Patel

Immanuel Kant Essay, Research Paper

Meetesh Patel

Philosophy

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. Immanuel Kant s moral philosophy centers around the notion of the good will. Kant believes the good will is the faculty of acting according to a conception of law. He believes we control however, what is the will behind the action.

He uses his three principles to support his belief. Kant s three principles of Morality are

1. An action has moral worth or value that is, is good if it is not merely in agreement with duty but also for the sake of duty.

2. An action s moral worth originates in the form of the maxim that guides the action.

3. Duty is the necessity of an action executed out of respect for the law.

The morality of an action, therefore, must be assessed in terms of the motivation behind it. For example, If two people, Smith and Jill, perform the same act, from the same conception of the law, but events beyond Smith’s control prevent her from achieving her goal, Smith is not less praiseworthy for not succeeding. We must consider them on equal moral ground in terms of the will behind their actions. He believes the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will. In his eyes, happiness is not essentially good because even being worthy of happiness, Kant says, requires that one possess a good will. The good will is the only unconditional good despite all encroachments. Kant s shopkeeper example is an easy way to understand this. A shopkeeper, Kant says, might do what is in accord with duty and not overcharge a child. Kant argues, “it is not sufficient to do that which should be morally good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the law.” There is a clear moral difference between the shopkeeper that does it for his own advantage to keep from offending other customers and the shopkeeper who does it from duty and the principle of honesty. This example ties in to Kant s Three Principles of Morality. We may be tempted to think that the motivation that makes an action good is having a positive goal–to make people happy, or to provide some benefit. But Kant disagrees. He believes that No outcome, should we achieve it, can be unconditionally good. Fortune can be misused, what we thought would bring benefit might actually bring harm, and happiness might be undeserved. Hoping to achieve some type of an end, no matter how beneficial it may seem, is not purely and unconditionally good. It is not the effect or even the intended effect that bestows moral character on an action. All intended effects “could be brought about through other causes and would not require the will of a rational being, while the highest and unconditional good can be found only in such a will.” So it is the recognition and appreciation of duty itself that must drive our actions.

What is the duty that is to motivate our actions and to give them moral value? For this Kant uses two laws produced by reason. If we are given some end we wish to achieve, reason can then provide a hypothetical imperative, which is a rule of action for achieving the end. One way to think is explain this is using the act of buying a new car. In a buying a new car, you must first determine what kind of car you want to buy. Conceiving of a way to achieve some desired end is by far the most common employment of reason. But Kant has shown that the acceptable conception of the moral law cannot be merely hypothetical. He thinks that our actions cannot be moral on the ground of some conditional purpose or goal. Kant says NOT IN MY HOUSE J. In his view morality requires an unconditional statement of one’s duty. And in fact, reason produces an absolute statement of moral action. The moral imperative is unconditional; that is, its imperative force is not tempered by the conditional force. Lets say for another example you tell yourself If I want to achieve some end, then do X.” It simply states, do X. Kant believes that reason dictates a categorical imperative for moral action. He gives at least three formulations of the Categorical Imperative.

1.”Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

2.”Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.”

3. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.”

What are Kant’s arguments for the Categorical Imperative? Lets look at it using this example. Consider the person who needs to borrow money and is considering making a false promise to pay it back. The maxim that could be invoked is, “When I am in the need of money, borrow it, promising to repay it, even though I do not intend to.” But when we apply the universality test to this maxim it becomes clear that if everyone were to act in this fashion, the purpose of promising itself would be diluted. The borrower makes a promise, willing that there be no such thing as promises. Therefore such an action would fail the universality test. The argument for the first formulation of the categorical imperative