Kantian Ethics

Moral Law - Binding moral obligations

Maxims - Another word for rules that are determined by reason

Duty - Duties created by moral law in order to follow a specific duty

Good will - Person of good will is one who makes decisions based on moral laws and not personal gain

Categorical imperative - Unconditional moral obligation that is always binding irrespective of a persons inclination or purpose. 'aspect of universability'

Hypothetical Imperative - Moral obligation that only applies if a specific goal is desired

Kingdom of ends - Imagined future where all act in accordance to the categorical imperative

Actions can only be considered good if there is no ulterior motive of any kind to that action (like wanting to feel good or gain a reward). An action must be morally pure, arising from duty rather than a selfish desire.

Despite a good action being done by texting a charity number, it has no moral worth if your only doing it to show off to your friends that your a giving person according to Kant. So doing a good action is something we should do due to it being our duty, but what is our duty? Kant composes many different duties we all face to ourselves and others:

- Strive for Self-Perfection and wellbeing of others

- Right to Freedom

- Duty to not make False promises, truth is a foundation of society

- Right to ownershup and freedom

These are only a few of our 'duties'. Kant concludes that society and state need these rules to be maintained, setting up a system of determining a moral maxim to test if it meets the criteria for a moral law or Not.

Kant understood knowledge in 2 particular ways, A priori knoweldge that we know allready and A posteriori, knowledge we learn from experience.

Two terms he offered to help explain the kind of judgements we make is Synthetic and Analytic propositions.

Analytic - Where the predicate belongs to the subject "All Bacherlors are unmarried) with Bachelor being the subject and Unmarried being the predicate, a certainty and clarification of what a bachelor is.

Synthetic - Those where the predicate exists outside the subject to amplify or add information. "The table in the kitchen is round", With table being the subject and round being the predicate. The table is not allways going to be round, it just adds information about this specific table.

Hypothetical imperative

Hypothetical knowledge is allways conditional, if its raining there is no guarentee you will get wet. In each case the command is optional. If you want the result, for instance playing an instrument, you must practice if you want to pursue that result but you dont have to go for that result. If we havnt accepted that we want the end then the act is completely optional. Kant disagrees with this style of knowledge of suggests we should look at a law that binds us morally.

Categorical imperative

For kant all moral knoweldge must be Categorical. If something is morally right in one instance it must allways be, concept of universability.

For instance if you want a lie to be considered morally ok it must allways be, and if lying is ever not morally right then it can never be morally right so should be ignored. To show this idea he put forward three formulas to inform our laws

Formula of the universal law of nature:

Our action must be something that can allways be done by you and by anybody else. Moral behaviour must be a consistent thing and exceptional acts are only applicable in very specific situations or cultural backgrounds.

Formula of the End in itself:

Humans are rational beings that have emotions and reasoning therefore cannot be used as a means to an End.

Formula of the kingdom of ends:

- Forbids us to make moral rulings that presuppose others and make them not treat themselves as a means to any end other then their own happiness.

Kant considered freedom and autonomy as a central piece of his belief, the "Highest degree of life". We are rational beings that adopt our freedom into a universalised law that is unchanging. We have the freedom to act in a moral fashion with the autonomy to make these decisions.