Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

-Deontological Ethics

-Born in Königsberg, city in East Prussia now part of north east Germany

-Experienced poverty and a strict religious household

-From age 8 his routine was study and work

-When he was 46 he was hired at a university as a professor of logic and metaphysics

Theoretical Reason

-Wanted to clarify how it is that humans come to know things.

Practical Reason

-Practical Reason moves beyond scientific and empirical knowledge to the moral dimension guiding human behaviour

-With knowledge humans act on impulse affected by the laws of nature but also out of conscious choice based on principles

First Category of Theoretical Reason

-What people actually do.

Second Category of theoretical Reason

-What People Ought to do.

Maxim= Universal Rule

Behaviour= Universal Rule

(Downloading music illegally-imagine creating a rule where everyone was to download music illegally)

-We know the effect alcohol has on our body

Practical Reason *

-We know we ought not to drink and drive

Kant's Ethics

-Good is the sum of moral life

-Concerned about the certainty of the principles of ethical reasoning. *Ethics can not arrive at the same type of certainty as physics and math.

-He said that there are 3 areas of interest: God, Freedom, and Immortality.

*We need God, Freedom and Immortality to be able to pursue and attain the supreme good.

God- the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe