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A maxim is a moral rule or principle, which can be considered dependent on one's philosophy. A maxim is often pedagogical and motivates specific actions. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as: Generally any simple and memorable rule or guide for living; for example, 'neither a borrower nor a lender be'.
Kant began his ethical theory by arguing that the only virtue that can be an unqualified good is a good will. No other virtue, or thing in the broadest sense of the term, has this status because every other virtue, every other thing, can be used to achieve immoral ends. For example, the virtue of loyalty is not good if one is loyal to an evil ...
Kant's ethics focus, then, only on the maxim that underlies actions, and judges these to be good or bad solely on how they conform to reason. Kant showed that many of our common sense views of what is good or bad conform to his system, but denied that any action performed for reasons other than rational actions can be good (saving someone who ...
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. Such judgments must be reached a priori, using pure practical reason independently of the influence of felt motives, or inclinations.
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 calls such acts examples of a contradiction in conception, which is much like a performative contradiction, because they undermine the very basis for their existence. [2] Kant's notion of universalizability has a clear antecedent in Rousseau's idea of a general will. Both notions provide for a radical separation of will and nature, leading ...
However, Kant also provides a positive definition of freedom: a free will, Kant argues, gives itself a law—it sets its own ends, and has a special causal power to bring them about. A free will is one that has the power to bring about its own actions in a way that is distinct from the way that normal laws of nature cause things to happen.
The Kingdom of Ends (German: Reich der Zwecke) is a part of the categorical imperative theory of Immanuel Kant. It is regularly discussed in relation to Kant's moral theory and its application to ethics and philosophy in general. The kingdom of ends centers on the second and third formulations of the categorical imperative. These help form the ...