Immanuel Kant (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Title Date Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant, the founder of normative ethics, is one of history’s most influential philosophers. Despite his towering reputation, he lived what many would consider a humble life. He worked as a tutor for years before his skills as a lecturer slowly brought him some prominence (Kleingeld 60). He never married or had children, and he never ventured far from his hometown of Konigsberg, even when teaching positions were available to him in distance cities (Kleingeld 60). Kant was engrossed by the thinkers of his time, including Newton and Leibnitz. He was fascinated by the work they were doing, and he contributed dissertations on physics. But he was not satisfied to contemplate the theories of others. He wanted to construct his own philosophy about the world, a theory that was compatible with the scientific breakthroughs of his day. His ideas about ethics would be concrete and not be subject to the whims or beliefs of individual judgement (Kleingeld 61). Like Newton, Kant wanted to uncover natural laws about the universe. Except that Kant was interested in natural laws of human morality, among other important considerations. Kant was interested in constructed a set of normative ethics which would always be true and could guide people toward correct behavior. He was suspicious of received wisdom. Like many among the growing philosophical movement known today as the Enlightenment, Kant was not satisfied to allow religion to dictate what was morally good and what was not (Kleingeld 61). He believed that morality could be understood scientifically, and that by studying it axioms would emerge which would always be true (Kant 92). This is what normative ethics means, finding ethical principles which could be applied universally, rather than selectively. Kant was unique in this way, since moral philosophers before him had assumed that morality stemmed from what was approved of by God. Theologians argued that all that was good was derived from God, and so people should look to the teachings of the bible for moral instruction. People were inherently sinful, and their redemption could come only from obeying Gods commandments. Kant shared the view that people needed durable moral rules to measure their behavior against (Kant 84). But he did not agree that these rules could be found in the bible. The wisdom that people sought could only come from experimentation in moral decision-making. Even if these experiments were mental ones, they would still be accurate if they were based on axioms which were internally consistent. He was especially concerned with consistency, since he realized that a uniform set of assumptions about morality would help people to regulate their behavior regardless of where they were from or what religion they belonged to (Kant 85). Kant recognized that even if a universal set of moral axioms was discoverable, not all people would follow those axioms even if they could be known (Kant 86). He recognized that humans have free will and could choose to act in either moral or immoral ways. But he also believed that moral truths were discoverable by anyone. He rejected the idea that morality could only be arrived at once one had developed had grappled with abstract concepts and learned to reason from them. Instead, he argued that people could understand morality by applying practical rationality to the moral quandaries they lived through and apply axioms to them (Kant 88). However, Kant was wary of the idea that people could simply think through moral problems and come to consistent conclusions each time. He observed how people were biased in their thinking about morality. Since there was often disagreement about a moral course of action, it would not be enough to let people make up their own minds about what was moral. They would have to have studied the particular problems they faced beforehand and worked out an answer for them in advance ((Kleingeld 68). Only by making a priori judgements could people be consistent in their behavior, instead of having to rely on intuition or received wisdom. In this way, they would make moral decisions that conformed to moral laws and would not be influenced by the circumstances they found themselves in (Kleingeld 68). Kant was concerned above all with establishing universal moral laws so that people could live well, though living well was only a se...