Kant and Hume on Promises

For Kant, ethical behavior creates and follows a maxim, and a maxim is a subjective principle of volition, a principle on which the agent acts to determine his or her decisions. Kant's statement is another way of saying that the action will have moral worth because it will have been performed for the sake of duty because it is based on the maxim of obeying universal law as such. This last statement by Kant is a way of creating a practical means of action for the moral life. Reverence for law is the rationale for the maxim of acting in accordance with the law as such, and universality is the characteristic mark of the law. Kant explains this through an example involving a man in distress who can escape only by making a promise he has no intention of keeping. To lie in this manner, if universalized, would mean that everyone could lie if they find themselves in a difficult situation and can escape in no other way. This is not allowed because it would mean that the individual was willing a lie to become a universal law. This sort of maxim has to be rejected because it cannot enter into universal law. The subjective principles of volition by which we make deci

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ding to principles through the capacity of will. This is what he calls the practical reason. Kant says that the rational agent is able to exercise choice and to choose the good. Human beings, however, are imperfectly rational beings and do not always act in accord with objective principles. Imperfect rational beings see objective principles as something to constrain or to necessitate the will; they are expressed by an "ought." Kant cites the categorical imperative, and the statement Kant makes about always acting so that your maxim should become universal law is the Categorical Imperative. Marlow knows that he is lying. He is not deluding himself about that at all, and in his own way he is acting as he would have others act in the same circumstances--lying to protect the feelings of someone who would be hurt by the truth and who would in no way benefit from the truth. Kant might hold that truth alone must prevail. It seems hard to fault Marlow in these circumstances, but in some ways he is feeding a woman's unhealthy delusion, evident in the fact that she is in mourning a year after Kurtz's death and shows no sign of emerging. This lie will not help her live again and so is a questionable moral decision. 4. The differ
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2849
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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