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Hypothetical imperatives tell us how to act in order to achieve a specific goal and the commandment of reason applies only conditionally, e.g. "I must study to get a degree." To put it simply, a hypothetical imperative is the blueprint for the use of reason in the interest of achieving a goal.
A hypothetical imperative is one that we must obey if we want to satisfy our desires: 'go to the doctor' is a hypothetical imperative because we are only obliged to obey it if we want to get well. A categorical imperative binds us regardless of our desires: everyone has a duty to not lie, regardless of circumstances and even if it is in our ...
The Kingdom of Ends is a hypothetical state of existence that is derived from Kant's categorical imperative.A Kingdom of Ends is composed entirely of rational beings, whom Kant defines as those capable of moral deliberation (though his definition expands in other areas) who must choose to act by laws that imply an absolute necessity.
Ought implies can" [1] is an ethical formula ascribed to Immanuel Kant that claims an agent, if morally obliged to perform a certain action, must logically be able to perform it: For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.
Central to the work is the role of what Kant refers to as the categorical imperative, which states that one must act only according to maxims which one could will to become a universal law. Kant argues that the rightness of an action is determined by the principle that a person chooses to act upon.
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.
The content of the universal moral law, the categorical imperative, must be nothing over and above the law's form, otherwise it will be dependent and based on the desires that the law's possessor has. The only law whose content consists in its form (viz., the form of universality), according to Kant, is the statement:
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.