Kant's Ethical Philosophy

The purpose of this research is to examine the validity and relevance of Kant's ethical philosophy, in particular the Categorical Imperative, to modern experience. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical and cultural context in which Kant's ethical philosophy was developed and then to discuss whether and to what extent a defense of the categorical imperative, as a controlling ethical idea, is possible in the modern world.

The development of ethical discourse appears to be as old as the emergence of philosophy itself. Socrates' continual and unrelenting quest for wisdom and knowledge, which got him into so much trouble, is suffused with ethical commentary. What distinguishes that commentary is not so much the details and content of implications of Socratic thought for all subsequent moral philosophy (although how Socrates argues his way to the conclusion that the unexamined life is not worth living is undoubtedly important) as the fact that Socrates was fully committed to behaving personally in a way consistent with his ideas. The choice Socrates makes for hemlock in the Apology, for example, is a commitment to a certain way of death based on a commitment to a certain way of life. If morality deals with how we ought to live (Rachels 1), for Socrates it is also implicated in how we ought to die. In the Apology, Socrates' ethic emerges as attachment to the Ideal Form of moral sense so strong--however vague and elusive an Ideal Form must be--that he is willi

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t come into the evaluation of the categorical imperative, only the potentiality that the imperative has of governing the impulse to action in the first place. When Kant formulates the categorical imperative, he is suggesting that the rationale for action is self-evident and self-contained. No additional explanation or qualification is required. Even so, consequences are bound to present themselves as issue fronts, irrespective of the integrity of one's methodical analysis of a dilemma, when bad things happen to good people because someone acted on a carefully reasoned concept of the good. Suppose, for example, someone committed to the prohibition against lying told Mr. X that he had six months to live. Conscience clear, case closed? Hardly, if that same night a despondent Mr. X committed suicide, thereby cheating Mrs. X and all the little Xes out of the insurance. Rachels criticizes the absolute prohibition on the ground that "Kant seems to assume that although we would be morally responsible for any bad consequences of lying, we would not be similarly responsible for any bad consequences of telling the truth" (125). It is, indeed, difficult to see how a nonliar whose relentless honesty does damage could expect to be patted on t

Category: Philosophy - K