Immanuel Kant is a German philosopher, and he is one of the most influential philosophers of all time. His great influence runs through all of the major branches of philosophy like epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. In this blog, I will explain about his ethics which is commonly labeled as "deontological ethics" or some times as "duty ethics" - the two names are just the same, the Greek word 'deon' means duty.
Kant's deontological ethics is obviously based on the concept of duty as the name suggests. However, it is important to note that Kantian duty is not precisely what we normally conceive of as duty. Kantian duty refers to the things that we must do based on reason - or rational judgement. What makes this different from the common conception of duty is their source of command. Here, in Kantian duty, the command is from reason itself. While, in the common duty, the command is from other people's personal interests. So, Kantian duty is internal - in a sense that it comes from your own reason - from your own rational judgement.
Now, for the lists of the things that we must do, or shall we say the lists of Kantian duties, Kant coined a term called 'categorical imperative'. Kant's categorical imperative is what he refers to as the moral law - the duties that we ought to do to do good. There are actually four formulations for the categorical imperative. These formulations refer to as our tool to judge actions as good or bad - or to determine what are the moral duties. For this blog, we will only focus on the first formulation.
The first formulation of the categorical imperative is called the universality formula. Universality formula states that to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”. To clarify that, first we need to know what is a maxim. Simply put, a maxim is a principle of action. It usually contains the needed action and the reason why it is to be done. For example, this statement is a maxim: "I ought to rob a bank in order to buy a house." That statement contains the action to be done and the reason behind why it is to be done.
Going back to the universality formula, it simply says that one can only act on a maxim where one can rationally accept that that maxim can be applied universally - that rationally, everyone can apply it. Let us consider the sample maxim we just mentioned awhile back - "I ought to rob a bank in order to buy a house." Now, to know if this maxim is morally good or bad, universality formula tells us that it is good if and on if it pass the test of the formulation. In other words, only if the maxim is universally acceptable as a rational action that such a maxim be considered good - and consequently as one of our moral duties. So, using our own reason or rational capacity, would our sample maxim be universally applicable? Would it be rational if all people apply our maxim which states that I ought to rob a bank in order to buy a house. Imagine everyone on earth who does not have a house right now robs a bank in order to have one. Is it a rational world? Intuitively it is not. Therefore, our maxim did not pass the universality formula and hence it is not good.
As we have seen above, we were able to judge whether an action is good or bad using Kant's categorical imperative. To repeat, only such actions that will pass through the test of the categorical imperative shall be considered good. And, these actions that are considered good will be the actions that will constitute our moral duties as individuals. These are our duties to ourselves, to others, and to the world. And, all of these duties are based on the judgement of our own reason or rationality. This, basically, is what Kant's deontological ethics is all about.
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