Immanuel Kant And Kant

1575 Words4 Pages

Concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character, the foundations of morality have long been subject to much controversy in the world, from this, the notion of morality and its impact in our daily life doesn't cease to be relevant. Even though human being might be created equal, differences among their ability to think, to reason, to act have been pointed out. From the fact that for most of people nowadays, the human being is judge by his actions in society, can we really define a basis for morality? Notice that Morality deals with the behavior, like objectives, motives and goals. Using comparison between Schopenhauer and Kant’s argument, I will try to figure out what is the real basis of morality for human being? What are the motives of our actions? What might be the repercussions in our daily life?
Try to compare two philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer is to highlight two important doctrines and subject to many discussions in the philosophical world that rationalism and empiricism are. Rationalism, which is, bound Kant doctrine says that human beings are made of their knowledge. Indeed, for Kant, human beings should rely on their reason for acquiring knowledge. They should not believe in their intuitions, feelings and senses. I will start by citing Kant in order to explain his principle of morality. “There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will”(kant, 393). In fact, Kant bases its principle of morality on the attempt of the unconditional good, in other words “the good will”. According to Kant, human should act in a condition of moral duty...

... middle of paper ...

...g unique. For him, only compassion can be used as a basis for morality.
Compare Kant and Schopenhauer could be seen strange since they are fathers of two different doctrines. However, according to me, each of them is right about his point of view. The human being is unpredictable and changing. Theories cannot always be applied to normal life. Every human being must find him inside the balance between his logic and feelings. Only this balance will allow him to judge his acts while being compassionate to the life situations they will encounter. Religion and government can certainly push us to do better in order to live in society but the human being is still the only one who can decide what will make him happy. Just to say that, for me each human being had his own basis of morality, depending on his motives. We should always try to act as well as possible.

Open Document