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- DictionaryCat·e·go·ri·cal im·per·a·tive/ˌkadəˈɡôrəkəl əmˈperədiv/
noun
- 1. (in Kantian ethics) an unconditional moral obligation which is binding in all circumstances and is not dependent on a person's inclination or purpose.
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6 days ago · categorical imperative, in the ethics of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, founder of critical philosophy, a rule of conduct that is unconditional or absolute for all agents, the validity or claim of which does not depend on any desire or end.
The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action.
In other words, the Categorical Imperative is a moral compass that doesn’t care who you are or what you want; it cares about what’s right. It’s like a universal law for all thinking beings that says, “Do the right thing because it is right, not just when it suits you or when you get rewards.”
Feb 23, 2004 · Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. It is an imperative because it is a command addressed to agents who could follow it but might not (e.g. , “Leave the gun.
- Robert Johnson, Adam Cureton
- 2004
The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i. e., as objectively necessary…Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it.
- Immanuel Kant
- 2019
May 8, 2023 · Kant's Categorical Imperative is a universal moral law that defines the obligations and duties of all people regardless of their individual backgrounds and beliefs. It provides an ethical framework for understanding our behavior and how we should interact with others.
This imperative is categorical. It concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is itself a result; and what is essentially good in it consists in the mental disposition, let the consequence be what it may.
