CHAPTER 3

DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS:
IMMANUEL KANT
• The German thinker Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) proposed a viable
human solution to this quandary. His philosophy views man as
autonomous and most of himself/herself as not subject to exgternal
conditions, results, and mandates. Is it possible for the human person
to be ethical? Immanuel Kant thinks so.
Autonomous Reason, Goodwill, and Duty
• Kant insists that every time we confront moral situations
there are formally operative a priori principles that can
better help the learner of ethics sort through his/her
task of living ethically. Kant’s research on ethics has
named these as reason, goodwill, and duty. These are,
for Kant, respectively, the foundation (reason), source
(goodwill), and motivation (duty) of ethical living.
• The foundation of a sound ethics for Immanuel Kant can
only be the authority of human reason.
• The voice of God is not heard directly today while man is living in
this passing world. Voices of ministers and priests who claim to
speak for God are but other human beings who make use of their
own reason in trying to understand what goes on around them.
This common human reason is also what they use as they
comprehend the revelation that is said to be the foundation of
their particular religion.
• Kant calls “duty” the obligation that follows what reason deems
as the action which is most worthy of our humanity.
• Duty or obligation is the motivation for reason and goodwill of
the human person. If one asks why he/she had to do what he/she
ought to do, the answer can only be because it is his/her duty.
• Reason tells the human person to do the obligation that is doable for
the goodwill again since it is her duty. The good that is reachable for
the will of the human person is, therefore owned by him/her as a
duty.
• Obligation for the human person is something one’s reason elects and
his/her goodwill owns simply as something she ought to do.
• Obligation is simply a must, a “categorical imperative” or a duty that is
defined by reason as doable for man’s volition and, therefore, should
be carried out by the human person.
“Man as an end in herself” conjoined with this responsibility to reach
for duty that is universalizable necessarily demands that other human
persons ought to be treated not as instruments in the execution of
what one should to do but as fellow reasonable beings, ends in
themselves. They are reasonable human beings too before whom the
self stands accountable.
• Immanuel Kant fully established the
independence of his ethics from religion via the
recognition of reason as the foundation,
goodwill as the source and duty as the
motivation of what obliges the human person.
• A “religion is not true to itself” according to Kant, if it goes against
what man “ought to do” as defined by his/her autonomous reason
and goodwill that reaches for universalizability. Only false religion is
cut falls unreasonably to superstition and does away with duty as an
obligation for his/her goodwill. It is therefore, such Kantian ethics that
is foundational for religion and not vice versa.
• Kant ,however is not against religion. For him the
value of religion rests on its reality as an
openness to “what one can hope for” Religion for
Kant is the very openness of ethic to the
complementary strength that is provided by hope,
unlike Aristotle, Kant does not define “happiness”
as the motivation for his ethics of duty.
• What is ethical id indifferent to happiness for Kant
and is purely motivated by duty itself.