Kant’s Life and Works

•      Born in 1724

•      1755: Assistant Professor at the University of Königsberg, East Prussia, present-day Russian Republic.

•      1770: Promoted to full Professor

•      1781: Critique of Pure Reason; 2nd edition 1787

•      1785: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals

•1788: Critique of Practical Reason  (i.e., moral reason)

•1793: Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. 

•Oct. 12, 1793.  Kant “rekants”

•Lapsed into senility and died in 1804.

Moral argument for God

•      Kant rejected all arguments except the moral one.

•      Kant’s formulation:

–  Justice must be done.

–  Past and predicted future experience shows that justice will not be done on earth.

–  Therefore, a perfect administrator of justice must exists.

Aquinas’ moral argument

•      Comparative moral judgments are made--the good, the better, the best.

•      Such judgments are intelligible only on the basis of a moral standard that embodies the best.

•      Therefore, such a moral standard (=God) exists.

•      Which one do you prefer?

Kant’s Concept of God

•     God must exists for two reasons:

•     1)

•     2)

•  “bestowed” vs. natural immortality

•      Kant’s theistic humanism

•     Strong version of Divine Power #2

Types of Divine Power

•      DP 1:

•      Martin Luther rejects free-will.

•      Luther:  God causes

•      John Calvin and predestination.

Delegating divine power

•      DP 2:

•       

•      God reserves “veto” power for

•       Aquinas, Kant, and most contemporary Christian philosophers.

•      Kant’s God intervenes only

Kant’s Theistic Humanism

•      "If no state of well-being follows his well-doing; then there would be a contradiction between morality and the course of nature.  Why should I make myself worthy of happi-ness through morality if there is no being who can give me this happiness?  Hence without God I would have to be either a visionary or a scoundrel.  I would have to deny my own nature and its eternal moral laws.  I would have to cease being a rational man"

Kant’s hybrid eudaimonism

•      “God wants mankind to be happy. He wants men to be made happy by men, and if only all men united to promote their own happiness we could make a paradise of [a waste land].  God has set the stage where we can make each other happy.  It rests with us, and us alone, to do so."

•      A synthesis of.

•      Much stronger humanism than

Religion reduces to morality

•      There are no special duties we owe.

•      There are no special theological virtues.

•      "There are no special duties to God in a universal religion, for God can receive nothing from us; we cannot act for Him, nor yet upon Him."

•      Thus, petitionary prayer has no rational basis.

Kant on prayer

•      "Praying is a superstitious illusion...; for it is no more than a stated wish directed to a Being who needs no such information regarding the inner disposition of the wisher; therefore nothing is accomplished by it, and it discharges none of the duties to which, as commands of God, we are obligated; hence God is not really served"

Strict ethical objectivism

•      “Even the Holy One of the Gospels must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him as such. . . ."

•      "If [a scripture] flatly contradicts morality, then it cannot be from God (for example, if a father were ordered to kill his son who is, as far as he knows, perfectly innocent)"

Our only divine duty

•      We are to follow our

•      Conscience is the embodiment

•      God has become identical.

•      “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21-22)

Centrality of the good will

•      Does this make Kant a voluntarist?

•      No, because the good will

•      The good will and the virtues,

•      Kant’s strict intentionism and moral rationalism.

Right, wrong & good actions

•      Right actions are ones

•      Wrong actions go.

•      “Good actions”.

•      One has a duty to be steadfastly honest.

•      One has a duty to give to charity.

•      One has a duty to preserve one’s life.

The Categorical Imperative (CI)

•      “Categorical” means.

•      “Hypothetical” imperative (HI), such as “If someone attacks me, then I should kill him.”  Note the “if. . . then” syntax.

•      This is a “prudent” action, but it

•      CI always requires an autonomous will, while HI forces one

•       

•      Auto + nomos means “self-legislating”; heteros + nomos means “ruled by another.”

Three Forms of the CI

_•       CI₁  .

•      CI₂ 

•      CI₃

•      Rational autonomy as

First Formulation (CI₁)

•      "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law."

•      Your maxim (i.e., a rule for action) must be

•      The will cannot contradict itself or

•      There can be no appeal to consequences,

Disharmony of the will

•      Rational disharmony is not a conflict of feelings.

•      Not because of disconformity to external laws.

•      All external laws must be validated by the CI.

•      The same as Aquinas

Lying and the CI₁

•      Lying is not wrong because it makes you feel bad.

•      Nor is it wrong because it violates an external law.

•      Lying is not wrong because of its consequences.

•      Lying is wrong because one.

•      “Thou shalt lie categorically” is

The second formulation: CI₂

•      “Treat all persons as ends in themselves and never merely as means to ends.”

•      Who is a person?

•      Meaning of “merely as.”

•      Test cases: going to a doctor, taking a class from me, prostitution, Baby Fae case, Baby M case and surrogate mothers.

A critique of traditional personhood

•      An arbitrary, self-serving

•      Animal rights critique

•      Conservative Christian view:

•      Human rights, humanism, classical liberalism.

The third formulation: CI₃

•      ”The idea of every rational being as a universally legislative will. . .  Thus the will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be regarded as itself giving the law . . .“(p. 151).

•      The interchangeability of sovereigns.

•      Autonomy as “ticket” to the Kingdom of Ends.

•      Only one “foot” in the kingdom? Augustine’s Two Cities in The City of God

A critique of Kant

•      Hume:

•      .

•      The value of benevolence lies its utility:

•      .

•      The utilitarian (consequentialism + hedonism) reduces every

•       

•      If the act maximizes pleasure, then one ought to do it.

Jones’ critique of Kant

•      The CI “begs the question,” i.e.,

•       “Reason tells us so” is not a

•      Why do we stop at a red light

•      The utilitarians have a better explanation?

•      Again the CI dissolves into an HI: 

•       

•      Kant on criminal justice

•      Rational retribution:      

•       

•      “The Devil’s Due.”

•      Punishment, not rehabilitation:

•      Rational criminals should arrest themselves.

•      "If you vilify him, you vilify yourself; if you steal from him, you steal from yourself; if you kill him, you kill yourself.”

•      The CI in reverse: if you will taking one’s life as a universal law, then you forfeit your own life.

Is Kant’s will truly free?

•      Plato’s ideal humans, who become like the gods and who “love the right because it is right; they cannot do otherwise and no longer have any choice at all. . . .”

•      Critique of Aquinas:

•       

•      Kant:

•      The demons in the New Testament.

Is Kant’s will free?

•      Kant: "freedom. . . is the ability to be governed by reason." 

•      The moral will

•      If the will is truly free, it must

•      .

•      The dictator God of the Divine Command Morality replaced by

Spiritual Titanism

•      An extreme form of humanism in which human beings take on divine attributes and divine prerogatives.

•      Religion reduces to morality.

•      God reduces to the rational moral will inside each human being.