Immanuel Kant: The Categorical Imperative
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What I expect to learn:
In this chapter, I expect to learn what categorical imperative means and understand some ideas of Immanuel Kant about good will and duty.
Quote:
“Intelligence, wit, judgment, and any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or courage, resolution, and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to make use of these gifts of nature, and which fir this reason has the term “character” applied to its peculiar quality..”
Review:
In this chapter, Kant shared his ideas about good will and duty. From what I understood, Kant wants to say that we do all things not just because we just want to but because of a reason and that is not just a reason but an important reason and that important reason is because it is our duty. Kant wants to impart to the readers that being good means doing good will and to have good will is to pursue our duties and to do our duties we need to perform actions which are required to keep you away from those actions which are forbidden. Sometimes we people, do things because of some self-interest or we can gain something after we accomplished a thing but I agree with Kant that we people should do things not because of any other rewards but because it is our duty.
Kant also discussed here the hypothetical and categorical imperatives and i figure out that categorical imperative will allow you to know that there are things that you do because it is your obligation and there are things that you do not do because it is forbidden. For example, you do not smoke inside the premises of the school not just because it is forbidden but also because you think that it is your obligation to respect your school. On the other hand, hypothetical imperatives means you do things because of some conditions. A great example for this is I must clean the house so that my mother will give me php 500 later. For Kant, the only moral imperatives were categorical because in categorical you just do things because you need to do it with no other desires or needs.
What I have learned:
I’ve learned in this chapter that we must do things because of one reason and that reason is because it is our duty. Sometimes, we tend to do things because of some rewards but I think Kant wants us to realize that we must be responsible for our actions because we are accountable for it and not because we want to be exalted.
Integrative questions:
- What is categorical imperative?
- What is hypothetical imperative?
- What is the difference between categorical imperative and hypothetical imperative?
