Kants Ethical Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Kants Ethical Theory - Essay ExampleA number of great philosophers presented their views in the orbit of ethics. This paper intends to analyze only one of them, Kan Immanuel. (Hunt, 2009)As stated by Banham (2003), Immanuel Kant was a famous deontologist and holds a famous status during 18th and 19th centuries. Kant was a moderate rationalist, who based his ethical conclusions on terra firma rather than on empirical research or on introspection into the actual workings of the mind. He refused previous theories and attempted to find a middle way between the empiricists, who thought that all straight judgments were either probable or uninflected (true by definition), and the extreme rationalists, who thought that all true judgments were analytic. He argued in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) for the existence of a class of judgments that were synthetic rather than analytic and also a priori rather than a posteriori. Synthetic a priori judgments played a large social function in all his thinking.Kant held a guess of value according to which the only thing good in itself and without qualification is a good will. That will is good which acts out of a sense of duty. When we turn to his theory of obligation we find that an act is not judged right by virtue of its consequences, actual or think rather it is right if it is done out of respect for moral law. (Banham, 2003)Dickerson (2003) affirms that during 1785 in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claimed to be seeking the independent pattern of morality. This he discovered in the Categorical Imperative crop only on that truism through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This principle is called an imperative because it tells us what kinds of actions we should perform, and it is called categorical rather than merely hypothetical because it commands actions of a certain kind without any(prenominal) regard for the practical(a) effects they will have. F or example, we should not make a deceitful promise to unpick ourselves from a difficulty not because we are likely to be found out or because double-dealing causes harm to ourselves, but because it is logically impossible to will that everyone in much(prenominal) a situation should direct in the same way. It is logically impossible because universal adherence to the maxim to lie under such circumstances would destroy the institution of promise keeping. (Dickerson, 2003)Another formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which Kant called the universal imperative of duty, is this Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature. A third formulation, based on the assumption that rational nature exists as an end in itself, is the pastime Act in such a way that you continuously treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any others, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. Kant identified the Cat egorical Imperative as an a priori, synthetic, practical proposition that is, a proposition that is necessarily true, though not true by definition, and that pertains to conduct. (Dickerson, 2003)Kant presented two types of release will Autonomy and heteronomy. Autonomy is the liberty to operate autonomously without any