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Kant’s Ethics – Summary. (This summary was produced for my introductory classes to Kant – references to this text should appear as Sjöstedt-H, P. (2007) Kant – Deontology, philosopher.eu/texts/kants-ethics-summary)
1. Kant and Hume. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), called by many the greatest of modern philosophers, was the preeminent defender of deontological (duty) ethics. He lived such an austere and regimented life that the people of his town were reported to have set their clocks by the punctuality of his walks.
- An Introduction to Kantian Ethics
- Some Key Ideas
- Acting For The Sake of Duty and Acting in Accordance with Duty
- Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives
- The First Formulation of The Categorical Imperative
- Second Formulation of The Categorical Imperative
- The Third Formulation of The Categorical Imperative and Summary
- Problems and Responses
- Summary
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg in East Prussia, where he died in 1804. Kant is famous for revolutionising how we think about just about every aspect of the world — including science, art, ethics, religion, the self and reality. He is one of the most important thinkers of all time, which is even more remarkable by the fact that Kant is...
Kant’s main works in ethics are his Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Neither give practical advice about particular situations but rather through rational reflection, Kant seeks to establish the supreme principle of morality. He starts from the notion of “duty” and although this is a rather old- f...
From what we have said above about the nature of duty and good will we can see why Kant says that to act from good will is acting for the sake of duty. We act despite our desires to do otherwise. For Kant this means that acting for the sake of duty is the only way that an action can have moral worth. We will see below what we have to do for our act...
If we agree with Kant and want to act for the sake of duty what should we do? His answer is that we have to act out of respect for the moral law. He has two examples of how this works in practice: lying and suicide. We look at the former in Chapter 13, we will consider Kant’s example of suicide at the end of this chapter. However, before doing this...
Let’s put these bits together in relation to CI-1 The “test” that CI-1 prescribes is the following. Consider the maxim on which you are thinking about acting, and ask whether you can either 1. conceive that it become a universal law, or 2. will that it become a universal law. If a maxim fails on either (i) or (ii) then there is no good reason for y...
The second formulation CI-2 is the following: Kant thinks that CI-1 and CI-2 are two sides of the same coin, though precisely how they are related is a matter of scholarly debate. Put very simply CI-2 says you should not use people, because if you do, you are failing to treat them as a rational agent and this is morally wrong. For example, if I use...
The final formulation of the Categorical Imperative is a combination of CI-1 and CI-2. It asks us to imagine a kingdom which consists of only those people who act on CI-1. They never act on a maxim which cannot become a universal law. In such a kingdom people would treat people as ends, because CI-2 passes CI-1. This is why CI-3 is often called the...
Conflicting Duties
If moral duties apply in all circumstances, then what happens when we have duties which conflict? Imagine that you have hidden some Jewish people in your basement in Nazi Germany. Imagine then that an SS officer knocks at your door and asks if you are hiding Jews? What might Kant’s theory tell us to do? Our duty is to refrain from lying so does this mean we are morally required to tell the SS officer our secret? If this is the conclusion then it makes Kant’s theory morally repugnant. However,...
Problems and Responses: The Role of Intuitions
One of the most common criticisms leveled at Kant’s theory is that it is simply counter intuitive. For example, lying, for him, is morally impermissible in all instances irrespective of the consequences. Yet we seem to be able to generate thought experiments that show that this is a morally repugnant position. However, in Kant’s defense we might ask why we should use our intuitions as any form of test for a moral theory. Intuitions are notoriously fickle and unreliable. Even if you pick the o...
Problem and Responses: Categorical Imperatives and Etiquette
Kant argues that what we are morally required to do is a matter of reason. If people reason in the right way then they will recognize, for example, that lying is wrong. However, some philosophers, for example Philippa Foot (1920–2010), have worried about this link to reason. The strength of Foot’s challenge is that she agrees that morality is a system of Categorical Imperatives but says that this need not be due to reason. Foot uses the example of etiquette to motivate her argument.Rules of e...
Kant’s moral theory is extremely complicated and badly expressed. However, it is hugely influential and profound. As a system builder Kant’s work starts with rational reflection from which he attempts to develop a complete moral system. He starts from the notion of duty. He shows that what allows us to act for the sake of duty is the good will, and...
Kant’s most distinctive contribution to ethics was his insistence that one’s actions possess moral worth only when one does his duty for its own sake. Kant first introduced this idea as something accepted by the common moral consciousness of human beings and only later tried to show that it is an essential element of any rational morality .
Feb 23, 2004 · Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a principle of practical rationality that he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Kant characterized the CI as an objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must follow despite any natural desires we may have to the contrary.
- Robert Johnson, Adam Cureton
- 2004
A short summary of Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.
hide. (Top) General Structure of the Work. Summary. Influence. English translations. See also. References. External links. Metaphysics of Morals. The Metaphysics of Morals ( German: Die Metaphysik der Sitten) is a 1797 work of political and moral philosophy by Immanuel Kant. It is also Kant's last major work in moral philosophy.
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