Transcript Kant Lecture

Kant
1724 - 1804
What Gives An Act Moral Worth?
1.
2.
Consequences: No. Why?
Control
Persons have intrinsic value, not instrumental value
Motives: Yes
What Is The Right Motive?
An act has moral worth only it if is done with the right
intention or motive: done in accordance with a “good
will.”
Good will makes an act good.
Good will: good unconditionally
The Shopkeeper
What Is Her Motive?
3 Possible Motives
1. Good Business
2. Sympathy
3. It’s The Right Thing To Do (good will)/A Sense of Duty
Only when an act is motivated by this concern for
morality/moral law, does it have moral worth.
Why Will & Motive?
What Is The Right Thing To
Do?
• Right Motive + Right Act
Hypothetical/Categorial
Imperatives
• To understand what is right to do:
hypothetical imperative & categorical
imperative
Hypothetical Imperative
• Not Moral
• Contingent: contingent or dependent on what
individuals want/desire
• Individual: arise from individual goals/plans
• Moral Imperatives: not contingent and are universal
Categorical Imperative
• Unconditional and universally binding
• Basic Moral Principle by which we determine
what we ought and ought not to do.
The First Form
• “Act only on that maxim that you can will as a
universal law.”
• My act must be something that I can will others do (I
can accept others doing).
• Given I’m a rational being, I can only will what is
noncontradictory.
The Second Form
• “Always treat humanity, whether in your own person
or that of another, never simply as a means but
always at the same time as an end.”
1. How we ought to treat ourselves as well as others.
2. Treat ourselves & others as ends rather than as
means.
Universality & Rationality of
Morality
Moral Law: we’re subject to it & author of it: it flows
from our own nature as rational beings
“Kingdom of Ends”: community of rational persons
Do our actions further or promote such a community?