How Kant Arrived At The Formula Of Humanity

Kant once posed four fundamental questions of philosophy: What can I know?, What should I do?, and What can I hope for? These three questions naturally lead to the final question: What is a human? In his 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he proposed the Formula of Humanity as the second principle of the moral law that “a human bing and generally every rational being exists as an end in itself” (G, 4:428). In the paper, I will look at how Kant established the two general categories of humans’ capacities, namely, sensibility and intellectuality, and how he arrived at the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself based on the distinction-in-kind between sensibility and intellectuality.

Kant famously conducted a Copernican Revolution in philosophy. As Copernicus placed enormous emphasis on people’s residence on Earth, when they serve as the subject of the observation of the solar system, Kant concentrated on the role of humans throughout his philosophic career. He provided a contribution theory, that we actively contributed the spatiotemporal dimension to the world. It was not a coincidence that our

He then explained that only one kind of the ‘ought to do’ demonstrated absolute necessity and therefore could form the ground of obligation. (I, 2:298) In other words, an obligation indicated that one ought to do something as an end, rather than as a means to an end—whether actual or only possible. (I, 2:298) According to Kant, the necessity of the latter action lied solely in the end. If such action was an obligation, then the obligation was only necessary under the condition of the end, which made the obligation contingent, or relatively necessary, and contradicted the very nature of it. (I,