Kantianism And How Does It Affect Me?

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"What is Kantianism and how does it affect me?" as many would ask themselves. Kantianism came about when the German philosopher Immanuel Kant viewed rationality as the ultimate good and that people were all fundamentally rational being. The idea is that the actions that people are to perform are not guided by emotions or goals but rather on duty, what is expected of a person to do in a given situation, making it a deontological moral theory. It is an absolutist theory because he specifies that there are certain moral actions are deemed absolutely bad like killing or lying. Immanuel Kant argues whether a person's action is either good or bad, is based around the motivation of that person. Again, Kanianism is the idea that a rational person is duty-bound to do the moral thing. It is not to seek pleasure or selfish pursuits but to do it because to do well for the sake of …show more content…

The problem with Kantianism would be how it isn't true absolutism because of it being flexible to situations. If someone were to borrow money from a friend and promising to pay back the friend but had no real intentions of paying the friend back, then the world would be doing it as well. This would cause mistrust and the world would fall into ruin. It can also be applied to the situation where someone has been told that lying is a bad thing but in order to save one's self, he/she would be required to lie to the assailant. This would cause a tear in the second formulation because if this person had to lie in order to survive, then this person used the assailant as a means to an end. Kantianism allows a person to lie if the situation is crucial like saving a life but what if all situations just so happens to "save a life?" By following this logic, the world might as well be lying to "save a life" because it fits the second formulation even if the person lying was called out on it. People would have no proof if the person lied or

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