To explain further the notion of duty, Kant uses as an example a merchant who does not overcharge an inexperienced customer. This decision is completely in accord with duty. Assume, though that the merchant avoids overcharging so that he can give all his customers the same price in order to keep them coming to him for merchandise. He does this because it is to his advantage to do it. It is, in fact, just good business. He does not do it because there is a moral principle involved, though the result is the same as if he were doing it from duty. Because the merchant is not acting from moral duty, however, his action cannot be considered a moral action. This is a very stringent definition and requires a knowledge of motivation to decide when an action is moral and when it is not. For one thing, the action is not moral or immoral (or at least non-moral) in itself. It is rather why the action is undertaken that decides that question. Kant uses another example in terms of the human desire to...
Everyone has the duty to preserve their life, and they also have an inclination to do so. If they preserve their life because they have this inclination, then this act does not possess moral worth. To have moral worth, one must preserve one's life out of a sense of moral obligation. It is important to note that this does not mean an act that is not a moral act is therefore an immoral act, for this is not the opposition that Kant is setting up here. He is only emphasizing what is and is not a moral act rather than judging the immorality of an act, which is quite a different matter.
Immanuel Kant Reasons for Kant's Belief that there are No Exceptions to the Duty Not to Lie Lying involves making a statement that is largely untruthful. Kant believes that there can be no exceptions to the duty not to lie - regardless of the consequences. For instance, he argues that it is wrong to lie to a would-be murderer, in order to save the life of an innocent child. In this case,
Immanuel Kant Today, Immanuel Kant is still considered one of business ethics' most predominate philosophers. Thus in a way, the study of business ethics is founded on the ideas floated by Kant and those who shared in his opinions. In this text, I will develop a brief bibliography of Immanuel Kant and later describe the contributions he made to the study of Business Ethics. Immanuel Kant: A Brief Bibliography Born in 1724 at
Immanuel Kant Freedom Motive and Duty Kant believed possessing and maintaining one's moral goodness is the very condition under which anything else is worth having or pursuing. Intelligence and even pleasure are worth having only on the condition that they do not require giving up one's fundamental moral convictions. The value of a good will thus cannot be that it gains certain valuable ends, whether of our own or of others, since
Immanuel Kant that the particular divisions of ancient philosophy be explained so that he may offer his reconciliation between the major accomplishments of the past by avoiding their drawbacks. Essentially, many of Kant's philosophical efforts can be seen as innovative reactions to the brilliantly constructed skepticism of David Hume. Hume made it obvious that both the rationalists and empiricists must be wrong -- or at least only partially right
Because the imperative is something that stems from the rational will, adherence to it is really only adherence to the law that the will itself created. The will, that is, is acting as the will tells itself it has to. Due to the circular nature of the will's imperative to behave a certain way, obedience to the imperative is actually obedience to the self, and obeying moral law requires
Epistemology Immanuel Kant's explanation on how we gain knowledge is preferable to that of David Hume. The mind can be compared with the computer in illustrating how the mind gathers and processes information or sense-data from generalizations, which in turn derive from a categorical imperative. A person need not experience something before he can apprehend or learn it. Exposition. David Hume believes that all ideas are derived and become knowable only from
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