Kant And Existentialism

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From rational deontology to existentialism, philosophers can have a wide range of beliefs and theories of morals. Kant, being the first to develop his theories, believed in a categorical imperative. Kant wants people to act from duty, and this is the basis of his moral perception. Nietzsche on the other hand challenges this and attempts to question and explain where these moral values come from and why they have vale at all. Kant’s moral theories are extremely rationally based, and also based on having a motive to act. This motive for Kant often comes from having an obligation to duty. He applies his theories to duty as duty is the primary source of good by itself, making only acts that come from duty the truly moral ones. He presents a …show more content…

Existentialism is believing that an individual is in charge of their own development through acts of their own will. For this form of beliefs, conformity is a major problem. It is a problem because it does not allow an individual to make their own choices for themselves. Nietzsche focuses less the moral law like Kant does, and is more concerned about how the view of morals has shifted. In older times, being rich and powerful equated being good, while being poor and weak equated being bad. Now todays views show that it is completely different. Being good means to be honest, respectful, and obeying laws, etc. while badness comes from disobeying laws, lying, killing, cheating, being selfish, etc. This shift happened because of the perspective that people have on such issues. These perspectives come from things like religion. To Nietzsche religion is just something that humans use to make sense of the universe and convince themselves that it isn’t meaningless to be alive. It acts as a narrative for people’s lives. This is not quite a good thing to him as it forces people to have psychological problems such as feeling guilt for normal humanly functions. A person normally not only will punish others for actions they feel false but punish themselves, even if it is just feeling guilty. Nietzsche also tackles the issue of people having ascetic ideals or heroic figures to look up to. Many people wish to be like the person who “leads” their religion, such as Jesus, Buddha, or Moses. The problem with having these idols comes in when people want to be exactly like them. As all of these people lived in basic poverty, or lived a life of detachment and not many people in the world actually live like they had. Every person, according to Nietzsche, adopts a meaning of like that tries to alter everything a human does. He wants individuals to become who they are as

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