Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was an 18^th century enlightenment philosopher from Königsberg and is well known for his study of epistemology, metaphysics and political theory. However Kant is arguably most well renowned for his doctrines on ethics and Christian morals.

Kant believed very firmly that that the action one takes, is moral or immoral based on that act rather than the consequences thereof, this is the ethical theory known as deontology and was Kant’s radical change from the contemporary belief of consequentialism. Kant followed deontology as he believed it was the best way to follow Jesus’ teaching of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Even if the consequence of the action is overall worse, or the person has acted out of immoral reasons, the action is still of itself a moral one.

Kant also wrote that all moral actions were either intrinsically good or evil and that there was no grey area in between the two, this is known as Kant’s categorical imperative, from this he established the three formulations or Maxims:

Maxim one: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”

Here Kant states that all actions must have universality, that if a moral action is wrong in one circumstance it is therefore always wrong, he believes that an action can only be moral if it would be acceptable for everyone to do all of the time.

Maxim two: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

Kant says here that it is our moral duty to treat all human beings as an ends rather than a means, and that we should not deceive or manipulate others in order achieve our own goals. Kant claimed that all humans were an end in themselves and that they have a right to their own free will.

Maxim 3: “every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.”

In the third formulation Kant believes that all human beings are their own moral agents in the world and must all act as if they were the supreme moral authority of the entire universe. This maxim is essentially a stage to apply the previous two maxims, Kant uses this Maxim to give the categorical imperative a social context to which it can exist in the world.

Although Kant was highly sceptical of the philosophical reasoning of the existence of God after studying the work of David Hume, he did however believe God to be a universal law maker and believed that humans were made in Gods image and thus we reflected God’s moral judgement, this was Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God based on practical reason.

"Two things awe me the most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." - Immanuel Kant