Immanuel Kant: Categorical Imperative And Ethical Deliberation

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Elizabeth Arruda Dr. Lois Eveleth Philosophy 25 April 2014 Immanuel Kant: Categorical Imperative and Ethical Deliberation Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory is referred to as deontology, which is where one acts according to one’s principle. He believes that the will has ethical priority over the body and soul. The only way a will is a good will is to the extent that the person acts from a sense of duty and functions with reason. By determining what is good, Kant uses categorical imperative in order to help in ethical deliberation. The human being is seen as 2 dimensional which includes the body and soul. The soul consists of 3 parts: it is alive, reason/intellect, and lastly the decision maker also known as the will. In order to make a will a good will, we must function with reason but reason can become corrupted. Its job is to gather the information, connect the dots, and present the evidence to the will. Reason is only a helper in determining if a will is good. Qualities of the mind can be extremely harmful if the will is not good. To make it good, we must act from a sense of duty, which causes our actions to be good. Moral duty and moral law can be expressed as categorical imperative. We must look at categorical imperatives in order to determine what we ought to do regardless of what we want to happen. It concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle that results. What is essentially good consists in the mental disposition of consequences that result without it being interfered. Kant’s great moral principle, categorical imperative, has to be a priori. A priori is a phrase in Latin that represents a sentence, statement, or idea under four conditions. An a priori must be indep... ... middle of paper ... ...or achieving good consequences has no moral value. It does not mean it is evil but a person may not achieve good will in this way. Categorical imperative commands us to exercise our wills in a particular way by not performing some action or other. Through Kant, readers are able to distinguish how categorical imperative can be determined through ethical deliberation. Immanuel Kant is considered to be one of the most important figures of modern philosophy. He aimed at introducing the will as part of the soul and identified its meaning through experiences. Categorical imperative is based on the idea that morality is derived from rationality and moral judgments support it. There were no gray areas in the mind of Kant because he believed what is right is right and what is wrong shall remain wrong. By looking at ethical deliberation, we are able to determine our maxim.

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