...Kant vs. Nietzsche One of the most fundamental questions in philosophy is what the most important thing we are looking for is and what effects it has on our lives. There are different views related to such a fundamental question. The treatment of people is the question of morality. We are going to take a look at positions taken by great German philosophers Kant and Nietzsche on the question of morality and the way people should be treated, based on their arguments presented in theories developed by them. Kant’s philosophy is based on the assumption that there is a metaphysical dimension which implies that there are some absolute things that do exist outside of human beings and which are the ends in themselves (not intended to promote an achievement of any other end). Kant calls these abstract absolute things the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative in his view is something that is not dependent on anything else and, therefore, should be something that we should strive for. The concept of the categorical imperative is important because we can use it to determine whether our actions are being moral through the application of the universal law, which implies the categorical imperative. The universal law says that we should never act except in such a way that we can also will that our maxim should become a universal law. The whole system of Kant’s morality is based on the assumption that there is an autonomous will, which is the source of moral action and decision-making...
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...Wyatt Garrett Professor Schiller World Philosophies 2 February 2013 Material on Morality Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 and grew up in the town of Konigsberg, from which he hardly stirred. Growing up in a family that emphasized the importance of education, discipline and religious devotion. He enrolled in the University of Konigsberg at age sixteen, and would spend his entire life working there. In his life, Kant pioneered philosophy by severing philosophies rootedness to the doctrines of radical enlightenment: materialism determinism, and atheism. He felt a great tension between the humanists’ emphasis on ‘the dignity of man’ and sciences reduction of human beings to ‘specks of dust’. His rejection of many Enlightenment philosophies and work to reconcile others resulted in the philosophies that rocketed philosophy far beyond the debate between rationalists and empiricists. I will explore Kant’s views on what knowledge is and what is possible to know, which I will then compare these views to those held by sceptics and dogmatists. Similarly, I will discuss how Kant’s deviating epistemology led to the formation of his categorical imperative and views on morality, contrasting this moral code to the ones of the Hellenistic schools of thought. Lastly, I will deliberate on how Kant’s categorical imperative is nonoperational with the 20th and 21st century’s understanding of psychology and quantum physics. Kant believed that our understanding of the external world was two-part...
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...Immanuel Kant was born April 22, 1724 in Königsberg, East Prussia, and its dominant language was German. Kant was born into an artisan family with modest means. His father was a harness maker, and his mother was the daughter of a harness maker. Kant's family was never destitute, but his father's trade was in decline during Kant's youth and his parents at times had to rely on extended family for financial support. In his youth, Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was brought up in a Pietistic household that emphasized intense religious devotion, personal humility, and interpretation of the Bible. Kant received a stern education that preferred Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant attended college at the University of Königsberg, where his early interest in classics was quickly overtaken by philosophy, which all first year students studied and which encompassed mathematics and physics as well as logic, metaphysics, ethics, and natural law. Kant's philosophy professors exposed him to the approach of Christian Wolff. But Kant was also exposed to a range of German and British critics of Wolff, and there were threads of Aristotelian and Pietism represented in the philosophy faculty as well. Kant's favorite teacher was Martin Knutzen, a Pietistic follower who was influenced by Christian Wolff and the British philosopher John Locke. Kant released his first work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces in 1747, which was...
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...IMMANUEL KANT - BIOGRAPHY Dropbox Assignment #3 By Michael Johnson Darryl Sanborn Business Ethics (MGMT 368) 04/12/06 Michael Johnson Darryl Sanborn Business Ethics (MGMT 368) 04/12/06 IMMANUEL KANT - BIOGRAPHY Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1724. He attended the Collegium Fridiricianum when he was eight years old. He studied there for eight years. He then went into the University Of Königsberg, where he spent his academic career focusing on philosophy, mathematics and physics. When his father passed away it affected him strongly and he left the university. He earned his living as a private tutor. In 1755 he accepted the help of a friend and resumed his studies at the university. He received his doctorate in 1756. He taught at the university for 15 years, in the beginning his lectures were in the sciences and mathematics arenas. He would eventually also lecture most branches of philosophy. Even though he had a growing reputation as an original thinker, he did not gain tenure at the university until 1770. That is when he received his professorship of logic and metaphysics. [1] He continued writing and lecturing at Königsberg for 27 years. He attracted many students there due to his rationalist and hence, unconventional approach to religious texts. This led to political pressure from the government of Prussia, and in 1792, he was barred from teaching or writing on religious subjects by the King of Prussia, Fredrich William...
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...QUEEN OF APOSTLES PHILOSOPHY CENTRE JINJA (PCJ) CRITIQUE OF THE NOTION OF AUTONOMY IN KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY AN UNDER GRADUATE DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE INSTITUTE OF ETHICS AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES OF UGANDA MARTYRS UNIVERSITY (UMU) NKOZI, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS IN PHILOSOPHY BISIMWA MUNYALI EVARISTE MARCH 2011 1 DEDICACE This work is dedicated in a special way to: My ever loving and caring God, My family and the community of the Missionaries of Africa. 2 DECLARATION I………………………………………………………..have read the rules of Uganda Martyrs University on plagiarism and hereby state that this work is my own. It has not been submitted anywhere else for any qualification. I have acknowledged the secondary sources used in this work. NAME OF STUDENT…………………………………………………………. SIGNATURE…………………………………………………………………… DATE: …………………………………………………………………………… SUPERVISOR………………………………………………………………….. SIGNATURE…………………………………………………………………… DATE: ………………………………………………………………………….. 3 ABSTRACT The importance of a philosophical study dealing with moral issues, especially the principle of autonomy is indisputably great. It is a common agreement that morality is located within the scope of duty. Kant corroborates this held agreement by stating the categorical imperative which every human is obliged to act upon. He conceived this categorical imperative as the moral law which all those who claim to be moral beings have to live on. However, he also affirmed...
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...Eric Melino Professor Ndovie PHI 101 3/7/13 Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. Kant was a solid albeit unspectacular, student. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed education that preferred Latin and religious instruction instead of mathematics and science. Kant lived a predictable life. He never married. Kant was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author before starting on his major philosophical works. He studied at the University of Königsberg. He is best known for his work in philosophy of ethics and metaphysics. Immanuel Kant “rejected the empiricists blank slate hypothesis on the grounds that the mind was not simply a passive receptacle of neutral sense data (Palmer 102).” He replaced some of these ideas with categories, which were formal and active features of the mind. Kant’s model of the mind can be broken down into three categories: the mind is complex set of abilities, the functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity, and these functions called synthesis. “Kant held surprisingly strong and not entirely consistent views on the empirical study of the mind. The empirical method for doing psychology that Kant discussed was introspection (Brook).” Kant’s synthesis is broken down into three parts: apprehending in intuition, reproducing in imagination, and recognizing in concepts. Each of these three concepts relates to a different aspect of fundamental duality of intuition...
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...Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and David Hume (1711-1776) are two of the most influential and remarkable philosophers who have ever lived. Their perspectives on various subjects have certainly left a dent on the topics of literature, history, and philosophy. They were not afraid of turning away from common knowledge, and reinventing certain understandings about the world. Each of these philosophers were known for their new, innovative, and challenging ideas. The topic of causality (the relation between an event and a second event, where the first event is understood to be responsible for the second) was one specifically discussed by both men with great intensity, and their respective opinions shaped the minds of hundreds upon hundreds...
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...Philosophers Comparison I chose to compare Kant and Buddha, with a leaning more to the Indian Buddha, rather than the Chinese form of Buddha. The comparison of these two philosophers may seem a little strange but I found that they share a similarity of thought. Kant’s moral law, which can be simplified to (Palomo-Lamarca, Palmquist 2001), “The moral law is a law I make for myself and apply to myself”. Strangely enough this is also the first step in Buddha’s teaching of morality; “The first being I hurt with my unhealthy behavior is not the other(s) to whom my action is directed, but my own self.” (Palomo-Lamarca, Palmquist 2001). I think it was this particular comparison that led me to choosing Kant and Buddha as comparison philosophers. Kant and Buddha have similar thoughts, one in particular is “Ding an sich”, the thing itself. Kant tells us that form is created by our body (mind), as did Buddha. When we see a form we see areas of black separated from white. Buddha tells us that they are one and the same, connected and that the form is created by us. Buddha tells us that our bodies may die, but the actions we committed whilst inhabiting those bodies continue on after the death. If freewill was a more tangible element, then the cause of the action could be stopped by the freedom of our will, curiously though Buddha also said that everything was dependant on something. How can something be free and dependant at the same time? Kant didn’t exactly give a viewpoint on free...
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...Link between Autonomy and Morality in Kant Introduction Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has set the stage for a German philosophy in the 19th century. He suggested that philosophy is a result of utilising and the appropriate use of human resources, in order to undertake various investigations prior to independent experience. Kant has set a fundamental orientation to the world of philosophy by introducing the moral philosophy. The primary aim of this particular philosophy is to seek out the fundamental principles of metaphysics in the context of morality, which according to Kant, is a system of prioritising moral principles that apply the Categorical Imperative (CI) to human beings in all cultures and time (Kant, 2013). Furthermore,...
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...------------------------------------------------- Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg in Prussia(today Kaliningrad, Russia) who researched, lectured and wrote on philosophy and anthropology during the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century.[1] Kant's major work, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781),[2] aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support what he saw as futile theories, while opposing the skepticism of thinkers such as Berkeley and Hume. He stated: "It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof."[3] Kant proposed a "Copernican Revolution-in-reverse", saying that: "Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ... let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition."[4] Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason(Kritik...
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...------------------------------------------------- Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg in Prussia(today Kaliningrad, Russia) who researched, lectured and wrote on philosophy and anthropology during the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century.[1] Kant's major work, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781),[2] aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support what he saw as futile theories, while opposing the skepticism of thinkers such as Berkeley and Hume. He stated: "It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof."[3] Kant proposed a "Copernican Revolution-in-reverse", saying that: "Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ... let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition."[4] Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason(Kritik...
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...Amy Vu Philosophy 205 May 14, 2016 Essay Assignment Kant Kant was one of the most influential philosophers in Western philosophy. His works contributed in whether or not we call any philosophy based on experience empirical, if we call it pure philosophy if it sets its principles based on priori principles, or any form of pure philosophy that is formal, logic. However, if logic were known to be only in specific objects of understanding this pure philosophy would be called metaphysics. He based a large amount of his writing on the question, “What can we know?” and through that, he stated, “our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the natural empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics” (McCormick). He believes that the mind is limiting us to only the empirical realm of space and time. In Kant’s view in ethnics, he states that the sole reason that gives the action moral worth is not actually the outcome once achieved but it is the motive behind the action. He argues that the mind is a blank slate that we would write our experience by experiencing the empirical world. That motive which causes that action arises from the universal principles of reason. Kant claims that only actins done from duty have moral worth, which is true because in his writings, morality is something that only rational beings are able to preform these principles because they are rational. “Everything in nature...
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...Philosophy Idealism The study of philosophy idealism is an interesting subject that contains views from different philosophers. It begins with the thought that discusses the theory of mind over matter versus matter over mind. This train of thought also includes the theory of perception versus reality. Idealism came into existence through the study of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of existence within the mind. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the most noted times of discussion about idealism (Moore & Bruder, 2011). Idealism argues against other philosophical theories including materialism, realism, rationalism, and skepticism. Idealism’s most common argument is versus the theory of materialism (Lennon, 2008). The argument between idealism and materialism focuses on the two thoughts of mind over matter or matter over mind. There were many philosophers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who presented their views regarding Idealism. David Hume, George Berkeley. Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel were very influential philosophers during that time frame. The differences between the ideas of perception and reality were discussed frequently by these philosophers (Walker, 2010). The work of previous philosophers influenced future philosophers. The ideas of each philosopher helped in the advancement of the knowledge to attain what we know today about various topics of interest in the different fields derived from the basis of philosophy. Math...
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...Name: Hoang Nguyen Period: 2+3 Date: 05/18/18 Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy ~~~Moral is reason~~~ The main claim of Immanuel Kant is that morality come from reasoning (crash course). A thing is moral because it a right thing to do - the existence of itself is already consider good - , not because it has a good consequence. As an alternative way to put this, if a thing is acknowledged as rationally good, it is moral. So how do we know it is rationally good like Kant said? I will discuss about it later on. But first, you have to know why we must live according to that moral law. Can’t we do the bad thing if we want? Agreeing with Kant’s argument, we can’t, it is our duty to fulfil it. He reasoned all living thing ( except human ) always act...
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...Ethics-MGMT-368D Dropbox #3 Kant June 19, 2013 On Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 near the Baltic Sea in Konigsberg which is now Kaliningrad and a part of Russia. Kant’s father was a harness maker at a time when harness making was in decline and as such his family dealt with financial struggles, but were never destitute. His parents were Pietist, evangelical Lutherans, who “emphasized conversion, reliance on divine grace, the experience of religious emotions and personal devotion involving regular Bible study, prayer and introspection” (Rohlf). Being forced to attend the Collegium Fridericianum, a Pietist school, from eight through fifteen, Kant’s youth was spent in forced devotion to Bible study and soul-searching. He did, however, find Latin classic writing interesting. As Kant matured, his “emphasis on reason and autonomy” overcame his youthful rebellion against Pietism (Rohlf). No matter how he felt about his parents’ religion, he admired both his parents and their strong belief and value in working hard and being honest. College at the University of Koinigsberg opened Kant’s eyes to philosophy, which included “mathematics and physics as well as logic, metaphysics, ethics and natural law” (Rohlf). Financially unable to pursue an academic career, Kant became a teacher at Albertina, from where he retired at seventy-two. His first writings were scientific works in 1754 and 1755. It wasn’t until later, from 1762-1764, that Kant published five...
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