Kantian ethics
- Created by: hdempsey16x
- Created on: 13-05-19 10:00
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- KANTIAN ETHICS
- Intro
- Developed by Immanuel Kant a German philosopher living in a time of crisis and doubt.
- Science was developing and began to redefine knowledge with a mechanistic newtonian understanding
- Kants thinking is a response to criticisms of the soul, freedom and God
- Kant did believe in God and an afterlife but was suspicious about relying on religious doctrine.
- Moral knowledge is known through reason not experience or emotion. A priori thinking
- Based on the moral law an objective law that always binds us
- Moral law is something we must categorically follow. not hypothetical as morals, for Kant are universal maxima
- Good people always follow the moral law and do their duty. Moral actions should not seek pleasure or come from revelation
- Kant is a deontological ethical thinker the rightness and wrongness of something is determined by the action itself
- Developed by Immanuel Kant a German philosopher living in a time of crisis and doubt.
- Duty and good will
- what motivates people to do good?
- Fear of consequence, gaining of an individual advantage, loyalty
- Kant argues that nothing can be called good only good will
- Duty
- We must decide an action out of duty
- Kant uses the example of the honest shopkeeper- worried about reputation
- You do things not because of what people might think but because it is the right thin to do
- Acting upon inclination from loyalty has no moral worth for Kant
- It is important to have active sympathy for people however we must not be carried away by emotions. Must not drive us to our moral thinking
- "to do good to others where one can is a duty"
- "Those who do good because they sense of inner pleasure be spreading joy are not truly moral"
- Kant establishes some specific duties to ourselves and others
- Strive for self perfection and well being for others
- Pursue the greater good
- The innate right to freedom
- Duty to not destroy ourselves or commit suicide
- what motivates people to do good?
- Behavior
- Moral knowledge is a priori and synthetic
- Kant says it is wrong to find moral law through gut feeling, God or depending on the situation. We can only find knowledge through reason
- All knowledge comes from within "though all knowledge begins with experience it does not follow that at all arises out of experience"
- Synthetic statements are statements by which evidence is needed to prove truth
- Moral judgments are synthetic. They bring additional information from outside experience
- Categorical Imperative
- we should avoid using the hypothetical imperative. a conditional statement
- Behavior is a means to an end, do things for a desired result
- Moral knowledge is categorical
- Three formulas
- actions must be universalizable (good for all people in all situations)
- Never treat people as a means to an end
- Act as though we live in a kingdom of ends
- The formula of the universal law is nature
- It cannot be an exceptional act that only applies to this situation or that culture
- Kant argued that maxims that could not be universalized would be self defeating
- Undermining truth telling is undermining society
- Benjamin Constant argues that duty to always tell the truth would make any society impossible
- The formula of the end in itself
- Human beings are national agents and are capable of exercising free will
- we cannot restrict people of their own free choices their own future life
- "nobody can use a person as a means to an end, no human being not yet Go the creator" Karol Wojtyla
- The formula of the kingdom of ends
- Kant forbids us from making a moral rule that presupposes people will not treat themselves as an end and only as a means
- However we cannot base moral rules on universal rules or uniform degeneration.
- We must imagine ourselves living in a kingdom of ends when searching for moral laws
- we should avoid using the hypothetical imperative. a conditional statement
- Intro
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