Morality and Humanity In Kants View Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Morality and Humanity In Kants View - Essay ExampleSecond, recast that apothegm as a universal law of nature governing all sharp agents, and so as guardianship that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a sphere governed by this law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is chastely permissible. Through come to the fore his moral constructs, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral philosophy should employ when pursue these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that the fundamental philosophical issues must be addressed a priori, that is, without displace on observations of human beings and their behavior. Once we seek out and establish the fundamental principle of morality a priori, then we may consult facts drawn from ex perience in order to determine how best to ease up this principle to human beings and generate particular conclusions about how we ought to act. Kants insistence on an a priorimethod to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles, however, does not always appear to be matched by his own practice. The Groundwork, for instance, makes restate appeals to confirmable facts (that our wills are determined by practical principles, that various motivations are variable in producing salutary actions, and so on). Later ethical works rely even more heavily on empirical generalizations. Kant did not take himself to be employing these assumptions in seeking out and establishing the fundamental moral principle, only in applying it to human beings. Nevertheless, it is not always easy to tell whether Kants arguments gain their plausibility only by relying on ideas established by observations of human being and the world they inhabit.Kants example of a perfect duty to others concerns a pr omise you might consider making but have no intention of keeping in order to get needed money. Naturally, being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is no self-contradiction in the maxim I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want. An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense (as would the maxim of finding a married bachelor). Kants bunk is that it is irrational to perform an action if that actions maxim contradicts itself once made into a universal law of nature. The maxim of lying whenever it gets what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when it gets what they want.Here is one way of seeing how this might work If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to cozen people any time it will get what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving ones newsworthiness could ever arise. So I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving ones news exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money. And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in nerve-wracking to conceive of my maxim in a world in which no one ever takes anyones word in such circumstances, I am trying to conceiv