The Categorical Imponents Of The Universal Law, By Emmanuel Kant

Emmanuel Kant was a influential philosopher and strong proponent of the modern era. Besides his large contribution to epistemology and metaphysics, his work in ethics was just as substantial. Kant’s ethics came to propose an objective morality, where moral judgments is not only true according to a person 's subjective view. He believed the moral worth of an action is not determined by its consequence but the motive behind it. Additionally, the “only motive that can endow an act with moral value, is one that arises from universal principles discovered by reason” (McCormick). Through Kant’s ethics, he demonstrates this duty through his unconditional moral principle, the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative expresses that morality is not about the outcome (good or bad), but the right action regardless of the outcome. It is the responsibility to do one 's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of one’s own desire.

Kant describes this as the "subjective rule", that is, a rule that is deliberated at the subjective level. Consider a case of human interaction, in which one has to decide his behavior in the form, “X does such an action to Y”. We may ask the moral question “should X do such an action to Y?” According to Kant, X response cannot derive from desire or pleasure but rather give a deliberate and functional account of his situation to Y. Both X and Y then try to work out a universal rule of how they should behave in the same situation. Lastly X has to see if his maxim (action) is valid for all rational being. If the maxim is valid, it is morally good to conform to it (Stanford