Immanuel Kant Research Paper

In The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), the great Western thinker Immanuel Kant outlines some of his thoughts on some of the most fundamental of moral concepts, laying the groundwork for many future philosophers and students of ethics. Kant's ideas are, however, fairly challenging, both to modern-day readers of his works and to the thinkers of Kant's time that relied on contemporary utilitarian and hedonistic theories, or on objective good lists. Kant refutes these theories by promoting the examiniation of the act, rather than the consequences of the act, or the intentions behind it. Kant's sterile rejection of consequential pleasure, pain, or any motivation to do good in determining the moral worth of an act is controversial.

To prove this, the philosopher looks at frequent inclusions on objective good list theories. All of them, he says, are only good if the possessor of them has a good will. Money can make an individual happy, but if someone uses that money to act in bad will or contrary to their duty, its argued that those riches were not used for good. The same can be said about, intellect, wit, talents, favoruable tempraments or even reason itself when employed in a nefarious fashion. In this way, Kant's singling out of the good will as the only universally good thing focuses more on the well-being of the society rather than on that of the individual. Hedonism focused on the pleasures and pains of the individual in determining the overall moral worth of an act. Utilitarianism had a slightly more societal skew by focusing on the net good and bad of the group, but Kant's view factors out the individual almost entirely, with exception to the motivations of his act. Because of Kant's singling out of good will as what is the only universal that has moral worth, Kant can use this focus to then lay out a way to judge the moral worth of individual act's. He calls acting on this good will, acting from the motive of duty. Kant argues that if an individual acted from that sense of duty, then that act would be considered right. If the act is done taking into account any other motivators, no matter

Kant argues that if you were to turn this maxim into a universal law and judge its moral worth, you can apply that same judgement to the individual moral act. For example, if a person were debating telling a lie to get themselves out of a difficult situation, by turning that into a universal law such as "When in a difficult situation, its ok to lie", its very easy to tell that this would not be ok. Therefore, that indivdual is bound by duty to not tell a lie. This transformation of an indivdual act into a universal law is again Kant shifting more of a focus onto a societal good rather than an individual's good. This process when broken down, is really just a development of 'The Golden Rule', where you do unto others as you would have them do to you. Kant employs these maxims that do hold up to the unversalization process hypothetical imperatives, as they rely on a situation in order to have truth to them. These are duties that you have when the situation presents you with them and things that you are inclined to do by your good will in those times. There is also, what he calls a categorical imperative or practical imperative, being a duty that you are inclined to follow