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For Kant, a good will has a broader conception than a will that acts from duty. A will that acts from duty alone is distinguishable as a will that overcomes hindrances in order to keep the moral law. A dutiful will is thus a special case of a good will that becomes visible in adverse conditions. Kant argues that only such acts performed with ...
Kant thinks that uncontroversial premises from our shared common-sense morality, and analysis of common sense concepts such as ‘the good’, ‘duty’, and ‘moral worth’, will yield the supreme principle of morality (i.e., the categorical imperative). Kant's discussion in section one can be roughly divided into four parts:
The typical dichotomy in choosing ends is between ends that are right (e.g., helping someone) and those that are good (e.g., enriching oneself). Kant considered the right prior to the good; to him, the latter was morally dependent on the former. In Kant's view, a person cannot decide whether conduct is right, or moral, through empirical means.
Kant argued that the goal of humanity is to achieve perfect happiness and virtue (the summum bonum) and believed that an afterlife must be assumed to exist in order for this to be possible, and that God must be assumed to exist to provide this. Rather than aiming to prove the existence of God, however, Kant was simply attempting to demonstrate ...
Kant thinks imperfect duties allow a latitudo, i.e., the possibility of choosing maxims. The perfect duties instead do not allow any latitudo . Kant uses this distinction in discussing some of the duties that were shown as examples in the Groundwork in more detail (viz., not lying, not committing suicide, cultivating one's talents, and being ...
Kant's ethics are founded on his view of rationality as the ultimate good and his belief that all people are fundamentally rational beings. This led to the most important part of Kant's ethics, the formulation of the categorical imperative , which is the criterion for whether a maxim is good or bad.
In The Only Possible Argument, Kant questions both the ontological argument for God (as proposed by Anselm of Canterbury) and the argument from design. Kant argues that the internal possibility of all things presupposes some existence: [1] Accordingly, there must be something whose nonexistence would cancel all internal possibility whatsoever.
Immanuel Kant [a] (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy.