...The Categorical Imperative Analyzing Immanuel Kant’s Grounding for A Metaphysics of Morals Anders Bordum WP 4/2002 January 2002 MPP Working Paper No. 4/2002 © January 2002 ISBN: 87-91181-06-2 ISSN: 1396-2817 Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy Copenhagen Business School Blaagaardsgade 23B DK-2200 Copenhagen N Denmark Phone: +45 38 15 36 30 Fax: +45 38 15 36 35 E-mail: as.lpf@cbs.dk www.cbs.dk/departments/mpp 2 The Categorical Imperative Analyzing Immanuel Kant's Grounding for a Metaphysics of Morals By Anders Bordum Keywords: Categorical imperative, discourse ethics, duty, ethics, monologic, dialogic, Immanuel Kant, Jürgen Habermas, self-legislation, self-reference. 3 Abstract In this article I first argue that Immanuel Kant’s conception of the categorical imperative is important to his philosophy. I systematically, though indirectly, interconnect the cognitive and moral aspects of his thinking. Second, I present an interpretation of the Kantian ethics, taking as my point of departure, the concept of the categorical imperative. Finally, I show how the categorical imperative is given a dialogical interpretation by Jürgen Habermas in his approach, usually referred to as discourse ethics. I argue that the dialogical approach taken by discourse ethics is more justifiable and therefore more usefuli. I The Synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism The philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is in the main inspired...
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...The categorical imperative tells us to act according to maxims we can want as universal laws. A maxim always contains the reasons according to which someone acts; In the previous examples, the reasons are to recover energy, avoid sanctions, maintain a good reputation and respect others. What the categorical imperative does is tell us if our reasons for action are good or bad. The principle will tell us that maintaining a good reputation is a bad reason to keep promises and that doing it out of respect for others is a good reason. So, keeping promises, for example, is not a well-formed maxim because it does not specify the reasons someone has to act in this way. I must mention, however, that Kant's exposition is not perfectly clear and consistent...
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...Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative appears to be a solid ethical foundation; however, there are major issues that cannot be resolved by moral absolutes. I will demonstrate how Kant’s arguments are invalidated by the fact that they cannot be generalized. Kant contemplated ethics and morality in context of duty; his logical argument progressed to a universal maxim, the “categorical imperative.” Duty-based ethics ascribe greater moral value to actions performed without regard to inclination, as opposed to a sense of personal gain. Kant insisted only good will was good without qualification, because good intention could breed bad results, and bad intention could result in goodness; therefore subjectively comparing good and bad were problematic when it came to universality. A related factor is the value on human dignity and autonomy; Kant emphasized that lying was always morally wrong, because it removed the intrinsic human value of free, rational choice. Respecting that value in oneself and others was the ethical option (Mazur, 1993). Kant’s categorical imperative stated: “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a...
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...ethics that focused on a moral act, rather than the consequences that followed it. Kant’s most important belief was that humans had many duties, one of the most important of those duties being not to lie. He then went on to say that, as it is our duty to always tell the truth, we should not falter on that, no matter what. Be believed that faltering in your duty was morally wrong, no matter what. He used an example of a murderer chasing their victim. If the victim had passed you and the murderer stopped to ask you where their victim had gone, you would be obliged to tell them the location of their victim – because then you would be doing your duty, even if harm were to come to the victim. Though an extreme example, Kant used this to explain the relationship between humans. He believed that if humans were to lie all the time, nothing anyone said would hold any value and no written documents would ever be a trustworthy source of information because no-one would be able to trust anyone else. This would ensure the fall of human beings, because a society built upon distrust would never thrive. So, to Kant, honesty was one of the most important parts of a human’s duty that could never be compromised in any situation for fear of destroying the human race. This absolute dedication to reliability of the truth all relates to Kant’s development of the absolutist theory that became the categorical imperative. This theory focuses on creating a universal law, applicable to everyone, whose...
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...Utilitarianism and Kant’s Categorical Imperative The issues of morality are most clearly expressed through examples of different methods of analyzing a situation. The case of Holmes, an officer in charge of a sinking ship, shows the striking differences between philosopher Immanuel Kant’s beliefs and those of the Utilitarians. After Holmes’ ship sinks, there are twenty passengers in a lifeboat that is only meant to hold fourteen people. There was no time to send out a signal for help before the ship sank, so no rescue is guaranteed and the nearest land is fifteen hundred miles away. Holmes decides to force the wounded passengers and those wearing life jackets off of the lifeboat and make his way to shore without them. This action can be described as either moral or immoral depending on the way morality is perceived. One perspective on morality is that of the Utilitarian view. Utilitarianism states that an act is morally right in proportion as it tends to secure the greatest utility, pleasure, or happiness for the greatest number; wrong as it tends to produce disutility, pain, or unhappiness. This means that what is morally right can be decided by what action will create the most pleasure for the most people. It can be said that Utilitarians “measure” each deciding factor to determine what is morally right, as if it were part of a mathematical formula. The values of different sources of pleasure and pain can be based on many considerations including: intensity, duration...
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...It’s 2AM, snowing outside, and on my way home I see someone at the side of the road struggling to change their tire in the cold. This happens to be my best friend, so I stop and ask if they need help. I would allow them to get in the car and warm up before trying to continue if they needed to. If they couldn’t get it fixed then I would be more than happy to drive them home if they were unable to fix it. Since they are such a good friend, of course I would let them stay the night at my home if they were totally stranded. The same would go if it were a co-worker. I would do whatever I could to help them. I am following Kant’s categorical imperative in both of these situations. Now if it was my boss who just fired me that morning to hire his...
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...Explain the main principles of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. (25) Kant believed that a moral action is made up of duty and good will. Without duty, an action cannot be morally good. This is how he developed the duty-based Categorical Imperative, also known as moral commands, as a foundation for all other rules and will be true in any circumstance purely based on reason. These tell everyone what to do and don’t depend on anything else, such as personal desires. Within the Categorical Imperative, Kant outlines three important maxims in ‘The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals’ which test how morally acceptable an action is. The first maxim states: “Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should be a universal law”. This can be interpreted to mean that only do something if it can be universalised and if it’s something that will always be acceptable for anyone to do. If it can’t be universalised then it is not a valid moral rule. To illustrate this, Kant uses the example of suicide, claiming that it is always wrong because it can’t be made a universal law. He asks us to consider if we would want everyone to take their own life in any situation, even if it is to escape a state of suffering and despair. Stealing would also be considered never to be morally acceptable in Kantian Ethics since it cannot be universalised as well. If it was to be universalised, everyone would be stealing from each other, therefore human relationships would...
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...Throughout the film V for Vendetta, V shows the audience his cleaver and insightful ways on how he plans to heal the damaged society. As V takes on the totalitarianism society run by the British Government, he displays to Kant’s theories that he is the opposite. Although his morals might be in the right place, he continuously uses others to meet the ends of his own means, which directly goes against Kant’s categorical imperative. Along with this, V’s revenge seeking mission goes against another maxim Kant put on his categorical imperative. This is the ‘universality’ maxim. If everyone were doing what V was doing the entire time, many more people would have been killed as well as they are would be no conflict in the first place. What the ‘party’ or the government of Great Britain has been doing the entire time would have never have occurred if they were all fighting the party like V was. V goes against every bit of Kant’s categorical imperative and justifies his own ends through other peoples will. V doesn’t force anyone to do anything in V for Vendetta but rather offers him or her a question of joining or opposing his ways. Sussman 2 As the film progresses, V just shows us how much he actually opposes the guidelines of Kant’s first maxim in his theory of the categorical imperative. The first maxim being universality, V shows the audience that he is the only one who can be doing this and no one else would have the bloodthirsty passion that runs through his veins. V being the one who survived...
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...from God, from human origins and nature, or from human reason. Instead of asking whether an action will result in a particular type of consequence, either good or bad, as is the case with utilitarianism and social contract, deontologists ask whether an action is consistent with a particular principle or rule. In Module 5, we studied the ethical deontological categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant. Kant does not believe the authority for duty-driven activity is God. Kant believes that human will is the highest authority. He believes this “highest authority" emanates from the use of human reason. In short, Perhaps Kant’s “duty” is not as absolute as one might suppose. Human ordained moral action is often subject to change according to personal preference. For Kant, the moral action conforms to a law of human origin and is absolute—it admits no exceptions, and it is universally binding. One is obligated to follow the commands of morality, whether one feels like it or not and despite personal consequences. One simply must follow the command out of respect for human reason. This forms the basis of Kant’s Categorical Imperative– if one can do the right thing, one...
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...Kantian Ethics Give an account of Kant’s ethical theory [25] Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who was born in the 16th century. The essence of his ethics is that all human beings are striving for goodness and that the use of power of reason solves any moral dilemma. This is known as the ‘summon bonum’. He developed his own ethical theory based around the idea of moral law. He was looking for some sort of objective basis for morality as a hole, a clear and scientific way. Kant believed that we could use reason to work out a consistent, non-overridable set of moral principles. Immanuel’s ethical theory is deontological, so it is based on the idea that an act’s claim to being right or wrong is independent of the consequences of that action. His theory uses practical reason to look at the argument before deciding what to do about the situation. His ethical statements are described as a priori synthetic, this means that a statement is knowable before sense experience, but requires sense experience for final verification but it may be true or false. His theory basically explains that all humans must do their duty, without the need for experience. Kant believed in right or wrong based on reason, he relies on intuitions or facts. For Kant, practical reason looks at the evidence and the argument, he says it cannot depend on external factors. For his own ethical theory, only good will counts. Good will is at the very centre of ethics, the person is a free moral agent and not one...
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...“deontology”, which was introduced by Immanuel Kant. This theory is more focused on what the people do, not the consequences of their actions. In other words, the people have a duty to act accordingly to the Categorical Imperatives, despite the fact that the actions will cause good or bad results (Bbc.co.uk, 2014). There are 3 formulations of the categorical imperative, which are the obligation to do our duty; our duty is derived by reason; and that reason gives rise to the need to observe categorical imperatives. In order to find out if things are categorical imperatives, Kant offers three principles for us to consider, such as the formula of universal law, the formula of the end in itself, and the formula of universal acceptability (Yount, n.d.). If the actions fail one or more of these tests, they should be avoided. In this essay, I am going to use Kant’s deontology principals to argue and to find out the solutions of the case of the confectionary company. The main issue in this case is that the children do not experience pleasure in their childhood. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bbc.co.uk. (2014). Duty-based ethics. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/duty_1.shtml [Accessed 9 Jul. 2016]. Yount, D. (n.d.). IMMANUEL KANT’S ETHICAL THEORY RIGHTS AND DUTIES. [online] Available at: http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BUS205-11.3.2-Immanuel-Kants-Ethical-Theory.pdf [Accessed 9 Jul....
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...Kant's Categorical Imperative Deontology is the ethical view that some actions are morally forbidden or permitted regardless of consequences. One of the most influential deontological philosophers in history is Immanuel Kant who developed the idea of the Categorical Imperative. Kant believed that the only thing of intrinsic moral worth is a good will. Kant says in his work Morality and Rationality “The good will is not good because of what it affects or accomplishes or because of it’s adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of it’s willing, i.e., it is good of itself”. A maxim is the generalized rule that characterizes the motives for a person’s actions. For Kant, a will that is good is one that is acting by the maxim of doing the right thing because it is right thing to do. The moral worth of an action is determined by whether or not it was acted upon out of respect for the moral law, or the Categorical Imperative. Imperatives in general imply something we ought to do however there is a distinction between categorical imperatives and hypothetical imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives are obligatory so long as we desire X. If we desire X we ought to do Y. However, categorical imperatives are not subject to conditions. The Categorical Imperative is universally binding to all rational creatures because they are rational. Kant proposes three formulations the Categorical Imperative in his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Moral, the Universal Law formulation...
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...The American manager in Italy was morally correct based on Kant’s three categorical imperatives1 even though the “Cultural Relativism”2 may put challenge on this statement. First of all, the American manager refused to file the tax “Italian style”3 on the grounds that understating profit is dishonest and not in compliance with corporate practice4. As Kant’s first categorical imperative states - one should “act only on maxims which you can will to be universal laws of nature”5, the manager acted on the maxim that a corporation should be honest when reporting profits. Being honest is a principle that has been universalized – consider the exception, which was exactly what happened in Italy back then: as a “generally accepted Italian practice”6, understating profits by 30%-70%7 was adopted by most companies in Italy when filing for tax. The consequence was that the Italian Tax Authorities no longer believed there is still any “honest player” and assumed every one cheats when filing tax. Thus in Italy a tax system that’s supported by honest and genuine self-reporting ceased to exist – the Tax Authorities had to meet the representative of the corporation (the commercialista8) and negotiate the “true tax payment” – the immoral action of being dishonest is thus self-defeating9. Kant’s 2nd categorical imperative promotes “respect for persons” principle10 which, put in business context, requires that “people in a business relationship not to be used (coerced or deceived) and business...
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...on the question of morality and the way people should be treated, based on their arguments presented in theories developed by them. Kant’s philosophy is based on the assumption that there is a metaphysical dimension which implies that there are some absolute things that do exist outside of human beings and which are the ends in themselves (not intended to promote an achievement of any other end). Kant calls these abstract absolute things the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative in his view is something that is not dependent on anything else and, therefore, should be something that we should strive for. The concept of the categorical imperative is important because we can use it to determine whether our actions are being moral through the application of the universal law, which implies the categorical imperative. The universal law says that we should never act except in such a way that we can also will that our maxim should become a universal law. The whole system of Kant’s morality is based on the assumption that there is an autonomous will, which is the source of moral action and decision-making. Kant refers to it as a good will, which can be regarded as good without qualification, because it is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in itself. According to this, here arises an interesting point that explains how Kant’s system of morality affects society and its norms, including very important question of relationships among people and whether these relationships...
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...Deontology: ethics, especially the branch dealing with duty, moral obligation, and right action. Kant's moral deontology is developed around a notion of a good will (acting from the morally proper motive) First, Kant explains that there is what he believes "a moral law." In that, actions must be done from a sense of duty if they are to have moral worth. He says the only good thing that exists without qualifications is a good will (or good intentions). He says that other things bring about the idea of goodness but are not actually good. For instance, happiness is good! But because happiness could potentially cause someone else to be unhappy, it's not really good. So basically his idea of the "good will" is that you should do the right thing only for the reason that it is the right thing, not because it makes you happy, not for personal gain and not because of your own inclinations. This leads into his categorical imperative theory. Kant says that you should always act so that you can will the rule of your action to be a universal law. It shouldn't be that you want to accomplish something for something, it should just be that you want to accomplish something. Four main principles of the categorical imperative theory 1: Treat everyone as an end, rather than the means. Don't use people 2:Our free will is practical. 3: Act as though your will is universal law 4: Value should not be put on a human life If everyone treated each other this way, we will have achieved "The...
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