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The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action.
A moral imperative is a strongly-felt principle that compels a person "in question" to act. It is a kind of categorical imperative, as defined by Immanuel Kant. Kant took the imperative to be a dictate of pure reason, in its practical aspect. Not following the moral law was seen to be self-defeating and thus contrary to reason.
It states that an action can only be moral if it is motivated by a sense of duty, and its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law. Central to Kant's theory of the moral law is the categorical imperative. Kant formulated the categorical imperative in various ways.
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 ...
The categorical imperative is stated canonically as: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." [2] In his Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant provided the following example of a maxim and of how to apply the test of the categorical imperative:
Kant thinks that the positive understanding of freedom amounts to the same thing as the categorical imperative, and that “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.” [xviii] This is the key notion that later scholars call the reciprocity thesis, which states that a will is bound by the moral law if and only if it is free ...
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.
Kantianism (German: Kantianismus) is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term Kantianism or Kantian is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind , epistemology , and ethics .