Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic Of Morals - Couverture souple

Kant, Immanuel

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1614270449 ISBN 13 : 9781614270447

Editeur : Martino Fine Books, 2011

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher who is considered a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant argued that the human mind creates the structure of human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our sensibility, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is independent of our concepts of it. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolved around the earth. His beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Kant in his critical phase sought to 'reverse' the orientation of pre-critical philosophy by showing how the traditional problems of metaphysics can be overcome by supposing that the agreement between reality and the concepts we use to conceive it arises not because our mental concepts have come to passively mirror reality, but because reality must conform to the human mind's active concepts to be conceivable and at all possible for us to experience. Kant thus regarded the basic categories of the human mind as the transcendental "condition of possibility" for any experience. Politically, Kant was one of the earliest exponents of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation. He believed that this will be the eventual outcome of universal history, although it is not rationally planned. The exact nature of Kant's religious ideas continue to be the subject of especially heated philosophical dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the idea that Kant was an early and radical exponent of atheism who finally exploded the ontological argument for God's existence, to more critical treatments epitomized by Nietzsche who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and that Kant was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian religious belief, writing that "Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul."

Présentation de l'éditeur

ACCORDING to Immanuel Kant, “rational knowledge is either material or formal.” Material philosophy concerns objects and the laws that govern them; formal philosophy (logic), however, is concerned with the “universal laws of thought.” He further divides the laws of thought into the those concerning nature (physics) and those concerning freedom (ethics), and it is the latter that are his subject. It is Kant’s contention that only by foregoing empirical study and relying on a priori “pure reason” can philosophers advance this “Metaphysic of Morals.” By adhering to a set of principles in this process, one may come to know the universal moral laws that apply to all persons. In the first section of his text, the author considers the essence of moral law and the various pitfalls that might lead to false assumptions. Is it simple inclination or, perhaps, avoidance of consequence, for example, to accept an action as moral—or is it that the action is inherently such that compliance is a moral duty? What is the standard by which we should judge what is a truly universal moral good? And what is the role of philosophy? Section 2 introduces the concept of the categorical imperative, a moral imperative universally applicable to rational beings—as opposed to the hypothetical imperative, one necessary as a means to a particular end. The section continues with a series of formulae to further develop and define the categorical imperative. In the concluding section, the author attempts to explain human capacity for exercising free will, considering the imperatives of natural law. To Kant, there is no inconsistency, for “a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same.” Freedom he declares to be “a property of all rational beings.” When we accept that property in ourselves and will ourselves to act according to universal imperatives, we have entered a “world of understanding.”

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Martino Fine Books
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1614270449
• ISBN 13: 9781614270447
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 98