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Kant regarded the good will as a single moral principle that freely chooses to use the other virtues for genuinely moral ends. [6] 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.
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:
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice; Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals. 1st ed. Translated by John Ladd. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. [introduction and most of part I] Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. In Kant: Political Writings. 2nd enl. ed. Edited by Hans Reiss. Translated by H. B. Nisbet.
Kant did not initially plan to publish a separate critique of practical reason. He published the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in May 1781 as a "critique of the entire faculty of reason in general" [1] [2] (viz., of both theoretical and practical reason) and a "propaedeutic" or preparation investigating "the faculty of reason in regard to all pure a priori cognition" [3] [4] to ...
Pure practical reason (German: reine praktische Vernunft) is the opposite of impure (or sensibly-determined) practical reason and appears in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Practical reason is reasoning (or the use of reason) that deals with what ought to be (viz., what actions we ought ...
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 ...
There are some objections posited against Kant's view. For instance, in Kohl's essay "Kant on Determinism and the Categorical Imperative", there is the question about the imperfect will, if one's will compels them to obey the universal law, but not for "recognizing the law's force of reason."
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.