He who governs by his moral excellence may be compared to the pole star which abides in its place while all other stars bow towards it. Deciding for oneself between what is right and what is wrong has always been an important part of life. All throughout history this subject has been debated and there have been many who have attempted to discover an absolute solution. Among these is the remarkable German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Applied correctly, Kant’s moral principles, specifically the categorical imperative, would greatly alter one’s view of life and due to this it may help to not only make the world a better place, but to also bolster individual lives.
Immanuel Kant was born to a simple family of devout pietists in Königsberg Germany in 1724. He was the fourth child out of a total of nine. He enrolled in a university at the age of sixteen for six years and later
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It is this theory which had the greatest impact in the philosophical discipline of morality. Kant established this theory based on his conviction that morality arises from rationality, meaning that all moral decisions are rationally supported. This is effective because it makes the categorical imperative unshakable by eliminating any grey areas. The categorical imperative can be broken down into two simple to digest maxims or categories.
The first of these maxims is the maxim of universality. The part of the categorical imperative dictates that:
We ask of any maxim whether we could consistently will that that maxim be held universally, that is, whether we could consistently will that it comes to describe, in a law-like way, human practice . . . [This principle] can be illustrated by the ‘lying promise’ example. If we all made lying promises whenever a need arose, Kant argues, the institution of promising would disappear, and hence the maxim, universalized, is not consistent with itself. (Uleman