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Immanuel Kants Moral Philosophy

Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra


Caveat
Kant's devoted servant, Lampe, is said to have faithfully
read each thing his master published, but when Kant
published his most important work, "The Critique of Pure
Reason," Lumppe began but did not finish it because, he
said, if he were to finish it, it would have to be in a mental
hospital. Many students since then have echoed his
sentiments.

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Teasers
Are we determined to act or we have a choice?
Do we think before choosing or we choose randomly?
What is the basis of choosing between a competing set of choices?
Do the circumstances in which the choice is exercised of certain categories?
Is choosing between Pepsi and Coke the same as choosing between lying or not lying?
Is choosing between lying or not lying the same as choosing between whom to attend when
your child is terminally ill and your mother is terminally ill?
Do any of these circumstances require a moral behaviour?
Is there a law that the moral behaviour should confirm to?
What is the source of this law?
Is any motivation required to confirm to such a moral law?
Can we imagine a world order without any moral law?
Is cheating wrong?
Is lying wrong?
Is infidelity wrong?
Is taxation wrong?
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Why study Philosophy
Love of knowledge
Love of the processes through which knowledge is
arrived at
Capacity of critical enquiry
Way of life Mantra to lead life

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Why study Kant?
Duty
Moral Life
Freedom and Individual Rights (American Revolution
Thomas Painne)
Justice (John Rawls)
Liberal values (Libertarianism vs Communitarianism)
Republicanism - Democracy
Multiculturalism(Individual Rights and Group Rights) What
happens to culture based rights in the emphasis on
individual rights?

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Biographical Sketch

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Kant and his times
Middle Ages
Renaissance
Enlightenment - The political philosophy of the
Enlightenment is the unambiguous antecedent of modern
Western liberalism: secular, pluralistic, rule-of-law-based,
with an emphasis on individual rights and freedoms.
Kants essay What is Enlightenment

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Kant and his times
What is Enlightenment
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.
Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding
without direction from another.
Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own
reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment.
For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but
freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things
to which this term can properly be applied. It is the freedom to
make public use of one's reason at every point.
"Do we now live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No ,"
but we do live in an age of enlightenment.

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Kants Classification of Knowledge
Rational
Knowledge

Material Formal

Laws of Laws of
Logic
Nature(Physics) Freedom(Ethic)

Natural Moral
Philosophy Philosophy

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Kants Epistemology
What exactly is knowledge?
How is it arrived at?
What are the processes involved?
Who serves as a faculty of knowledge?
If knowledge is taken as the given then what is it exactly
that we have knowledge of ?

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Rationalists and Empiricists
Descartes Cogito ergo sum
Spinoza God intoxicated
Leibniz Deus ex machina
Locke tabula rasa
Berkeley esse est percipi
Hume - skepticism

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Kants Epistemology
Critique of Pure Reason
Knowledge is a product of the interaction between the subject and the object
A priori
Knowledge absolutely independent of all experience
Necessary
Universal
A posteriori
Empirical knowledge, which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience
Contingent
Circumstantial
Analytic Synthetic Judgements - An analytic judgment is a form of identity relation,
and while it explicates, it does not add anything new to our understanding of the
object under investigation. A synthetic judgment does.
In all judgments in which a relation between subject and predicate is thought (I speak of
affirmative judgments only, the subsequent application to negative ones being easily made),
this relation is possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as
something which is (covertly) contained in the concept A; or B lies outside the concept A,
through connected with it. In the former case I call the judgment analytic, in the
latter synthetic.

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Kants Epistemology
Analytic Judgement - All bodies are extended.
The concept of spatial extension is already there inherent in the
concept body, and there is no need to look beyond what is already
known a priori. So this judgment is analytic.
Synthetic Judgement All bodies are heavy.
The predicate is something quite different from what I think in the mere
concept of a body in general.
All empirical judgments are synthetic.
All bodies are heavy is a synthetic a posteriori proposition. It requires
empirical experience of different bodies to understand heaviness, so we
are adding the new predicate to the existing concept of a spatially
extended body (which we already knew a priori). The inclusion of a
predicate not contained in the concept being evaluated makes the
judgment synthetic rather than analytic.

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Kants Epistemology
We can generally say that analytic judgments are made on
the basis of a priori knowledge, while synthetic judgments
are made on the basis of a posteriori combined with a
priori knowledge.
Now the real problem of pure reason is contained in the
question: How are synthetic judgments a priori
possible?
Judgments that have no a posteriori component at all, yet
still amplify our knowledge.

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Kants Epistemology
Synthetic a priori judgements
Everything that happens has its cause.
7 + 5 = 12

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Source of Moral Law
Is morality or moral law a given?
Hobbesian State of Nature - Leviathan
Social Contract theorists
Rise of the Modern State

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Source of Moral Law
Morality as Obedience
Religion/God/Church/Nature
Heteronomy
Morality as Self-governance/Rationality
Individual as the source of Moral Law
Autonomy

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Ancient Moral Law Theorists
The highest good is a pre given(Teleological)
What is the most rational way to true happiness or the
highest good?
How virtuous conduct and the virtues as aspects of
character- the virtues of courage and temperance,
wisdom and justice , which are themselves good are
related to that highest good, whether as means, or as
constituents, or both?

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Modern Moral Law Theorists
Is the right prior to the good?(Deontological)
Primacy of reason
What are the authoritative prescriptions of reason?

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Modern Moral Law Theorists
Is the moral order required of us derived from an external
source, or does it arise in some way from human nature itself
(as reason or feeling or both) and from the requirement of
our living together in society?
Is the knowledge or awareness of how we are to act directly
accessible only to some, or to a few (the clergy, say), or is it
available to every person who is normally reasonable and
conscientious?
Must we be persuaded or compelled to bring ourselves in line
with the requirement of morality by some external motivation
or are we so constituted that we have in our nature sufficient
motives to lead us to act as we ought without the need of
external inducements?

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Brand Kant
Absolutist
Deontologist

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Kants works
Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Practical Reason
Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Judgement

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Kants Moral Law
Reason

Good Will

Duty

Reverence for the


Moral Law

Self-legislation,
Autonomy, Freedom

Categorical
Imperative

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Kants Moral Law
What is it that pushes the good will to act?
Sense of duty actualized though the universal law which
further is based on the categorical imperative

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Kants Moral Law
What is it that pushes the good will to act? Duty
What propels or rather further propels an individual to
follow this path or perform duty just for dutys sake?
Reverence
Why should anyone have reverence for such a law? Self
legislation, Universal
What is the moral law?
Why is it that we should be following the moral law?
What is the incentive or what is the force propelling us
to follow it? Why are we motivated to act according to
this moral law?

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Kants Moral Law
Good Will
It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, on
even out of it, which can be taken as good without
qualification, except a good will
The very coolness of a scoundrel makes him not merely more
dangerous but also immediately more abominable in our eyes
than we should have taken him to be without it

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Kants Moral Law
Duty
A human action is morally good, not because it is done from
immediate inclination still less because it is done from self-
interest but because it is done for the sake of duty
Duty is the practical unconditional necessity of action
Reason vs Passion
Motive behind duty sympathy, love, affection
Duty for dutys sake
Shopkeeper example

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Kants Moral Law
Duty for dutys sake
An action done from duty has its moral worth, not from the
results it attains or seeks to attain, but from a formal principle
or maxim the principle of doing ones duty whatever that
duty may be
Comparison with Gita

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Kants Moral Law
Reverence for the Moral Law
What propels or rather further propels an individual to
follow this path or perform duty just for dutys sake?
Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law. For
an object as the effect of my proposed action I can have an
inclination, but never reverencebecause it is merely the
effect, and not the activity, of a will.
The object of reverence is the law alone that law which we
impose on ourselves but yet as necessary in itself ... All moral
interest, so called, consists only in reverence for the law

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Kants Moral Law
Reverence for the Moral Law
Why should anyone have reverence for such a law?
Because it is self-imposed and the more important one
that for no reason at all!
Just for the sake of accepting it and following it because
after all it is the supreme principle of morality, a principle
that actualizes our freedom and also because at the time
it was willed, it was willed as a universal law. So, I ought
never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my
maxim should become a universal law.
"Two things fill me with wonder, the starry sky above and the
moral law within."

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Kants Moral Law
Reverence for the Moral Law
the starry heavens above me looks huge, infinite and
absolutely sublime, but it means nothing when compared with
my own value as a rational being considered as an end in
himself, which is revealed by the moral law within me
The second [the moral law within me], on the other
hand, infinitely elevates my value as an intelligence through my
personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life
independent of animalism and even from the entire world of
our senses [the starry heavens], at least as far as can be
discerned from the purposeful determination of my existence
through this law, which determination is not limited to
conditions and boundaries of this life, but rather goes out to
infinity.

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Kants Moral Law
What is the moral law all about?
According to Kant nature and every thing that it
constitutes functions according to a law and the same
applies to will which acts in accordance with its idea of a
moral law the supreme principle of morality

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Kants Moral Law
Form of the Moral Law
An idea of reason
Applies to all reasonable and rational beings
Universal
Objective
Non-contradictory

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Kants Moral Law
Form of the Moral Law
An action is hypothetically imperative or categorically
imperative
Hypothetical imperative
Subjective principle
Instrumental Rationality (Pleasure and Pain Utilitarianism)
Means to an End
Synthetic a posteriori
Categorical Imperative
Objective principle
An end in itself
Apodeictic Practical Principle
Synthetic a priori

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Kants Moral Law
Form of the Moral Law
The Categorical Imperative

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the


same time will that it should become a universal law.
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become
through your will a universal law of nature.
So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person and
in the person of every other, always at the same time as
an end, never simply as a means.
So act as if your were always through your maxims a law
making member in a universal kingdom of ends.

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The Categorical Imperative
Act only on that maxim through which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.

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The Categorical Imperative
Act only on that maxim through which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.
Example of lying
Example of not honouring a promise

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The Categorical Imperative
So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person and in the
person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never
simply as a means

Man and in general every rational being, exists as a mean for


arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in all his actions,
whether they are directed to himself or to other rational
beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end.
Persons .. are not merely subjective ends whose
existence as an effect of our actions has a value for us: they
are objective ends that is , things whose insistence in itself is
an end, and indeed an end such that in its place we can put
no other end to which they should serve simply as a means;
for unless this is so, nothing at all of absolute value would be
found anywhere.
Example of suicide

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Kants Moral Law

Why is it that we should be following the moral law?


What is the incentive or what is the force propelling us
to follow it? Why are we motivated to act according to
this moral law?
Acting according to the moral law confers dignity .
Although in the concept of duty we think of subjection to the
law, yet we also at the same time attribute to the person who
fulfils also his duties a certain sublimity and dignity

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Moral Law and Freedom
Kant holds that there is neither inconsistency nor arguing
in circle when we say that freedom is the condition of the
moral law and later assert that the moral law is the only
condition under which freedom can be known: freedom
is the ration essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the
ratio congnoscendi of freedom.

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Moral Law and Freedom
Four features that are unique to Kants theory of freedom
The individual, the human agency is absolutely central to his
conception of freedom and morality.
Duty is an integral part of being free and moral and
consequently there is suggested a reconciliation between
freedom and responsibility.
Rationality of the individual is a pre requisite of an individuals
freedom and morality.
The individual in being free and moral participates in the
discovery of himself and simultaneously discovers the other
also giving rise to the ideal of human dignity.

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Take away from Kant
Respecting the individual Man is the measure of all things
Should your action be driven by the result it aims at or the
intrinsic worth of the same?
Should you be driven by, say recognition, when you opt for a
particular profile or because you like the profile?
Should you lead your life in a particular way because you are
concerned about what others will say about the way you lead
your life?
Should you think of levels of life or levels of being finally
dictating your pursuit in life?
Can the centre of happiness lie within you and is that in the
ultimate sense being autonomous? (Aatm Deepo Bhav, Aham
Brahmasmi)

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Food for thought
Is everyone similarly able in as far as being autonomous is
concerned?
Does Kant not imagine a very strong individual one that we
encounter rarely in day to day life?
What is Kants formula to choose between competing set of duties?
Is reason/rationality homogenous?
What privileges the rationality of a normal human being to that of a
mad man?
What privileges the rationality of a human being to that of animals?
Why is it that passion/inclination tends to be a more powerful
opponent against reason?
Can there be a mechanism that automatically guides reason to self
actualization without any tussle with passion?

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