Ethics of Kant and the Categorical Imperative Essay

What is a savourless imperative? A plane imperative is a honourable obligation which is absolute and necessary in any chaste website and isnt reliant on a singular soulfulnesss appetites or entrusts. For Kant, categorical imperatives be the root for holiness because they invoke unmixed campaigns for our moral activenesss and findings since each sage organism reasons to act verbotenside of their own someoneal desires or will which may cloud judgments or impose a biased verdict of the position. Kant explains this by distinguishing two divergent kinds of imperatives categorical and hypothetical.Obviously Kant is interested in categorical imperatives and uses this distinction to show the difference between them so that categorical imperatives experience out stronger. As stated before, categorical imperatives according to Kant be moral obligations which ar absolute and necessary in any moral situation and isnt reliant on a particular mortals desires or purpose. He a lso records that categorical imperatives (obligations) ar such if they atomic number 18 of a commanding or imposing nature. For modelling Dont murder is a categorical imperative which is binding to all rational someone and forces a person to act of great will.Hypothetical imperatives on the new(prenominal) hand are obligations in which there is an end offspring of your meet which is in dig a result of your personal desires our thoughts. An modeling of a hypothetical imperative is the statement If you want to stay out of jail, wherefore dont murder. here, there is no reason of authority behind it it doesnt wear any weight or determine behind it. He further distinguishes that there are different types of imperatives which make us act or think the instruction that we do in a question of morality. These distinctions are imperatives of skill, imperatives of circumspection, and imperatives of morality.Kant does recognize the imperatives of skill and prudence unconstip ated though he doesnt believe them to be as such good or of good will. Imperatives of skill call for action and are a means to an end in which the end that the person is seeking isnt the end result of happiness nonwithstanding some subject else. An example of this would be the commerce to not smoke cigarettes in order to stand a bouncing lifestyle. Here, your end goal is to live a healthy lifestyle in order to avoid conditions associated with smoking. Imperatives of prudence also calls for action and is a means to anend but with the end result be a product of the person hoping to achieve happiness. For example, the duty to be civilised and detectful so that others will do the aforementioned(prenominal) unto you and in turn you will be quick-witted. Here, you are hoping to achieve the end of being happy by acting in a polite and respectful counseling. Imperatives of morality for Kant are totally different from those of prudence and skill. These duties do not fill a uniq ue(predicate) means to an end but instead they act as a way of determining what to do because of what is morally in effect(p).These imperatives are the ones in which they are categorical since a rational being is one in which you are exposed to a situation in which you must patch up what the right affaire to do is and being a rational being, you bring the action which has good will which in turn means you are acting my duty due to respect and understanding of morality in general. For example the duty to not physically harm another person doesnt have a specific end that will take on yourself but it is the morally right thing to do if you are a rational person who respects the wellbeing of yourself as well as others.How does he arrive at the conclusion that The Categorical Imperative is the purest way to reason your morals? He reasons that the only thing that is unconditionally good is the good will and that good will is an act of duty. For Kant, acting from your duty means not acting by your own desires and wills but for respect of morality in general. Looking at the Categorical Imperative versus other moral theories, the Categorical Imperative is the only one in which a persons desires or inclinations arent needed to make a moral decision (versus Aristotles view that a persons skill and acting prudently is what contributes to moral decisions). at that placefore the only thing that is unconditionally good is to act according to The Categorical Imperative. From this, Kant is saying that the bill of value placed on morals of any action or decision depends on moral duty and moral law. For Kant, if a person acts from a good will then they are acting by moral duty and if a moral decision is binding to every person capable of having a rational thought, then they are acting by moral law.Since both are required for a pure rational reason, then The Categorical Imperative is the only moral law which allows us to meet these requirements of allowing us to act from g ood will and to also be binding to every person. Even though Kant does amount out to be making his point, he has many flaws in his reasoning. One riddle is that he doesnt look at the big picture he seems to say that if we are to make a moral decision then it should be based on being intrinsically good so that you are able to universalize it which is a good thought besides he doesnt look at situations case by case.He doesnt believe that there are any exceptions to his theory intimately categorical imperatives, he believes that it is morally right to act in a certain way for one situation, then you should act that way in all situations and also if it is wrong to act a certain way then it is wrong to act that way in any situation you are in. An example of this is say your best friend is very distressed in the hospital and is feeling down. None of his/her friends seems to be coming to find so your friends mom asks you to go and visit but then she adds that she will pay you twenty dollars if you go and do it. So you go and visit your friend which cheers them up.A few weeks later when they are out of the hospital, your friends dad accidentally sees your friend that you were stipendiary by their mother to go visit. Your friend is infuriated and confronts you about the situation. Here is the dilemma do you tell your friend that you were going to visit them leastwise and the money was a bonus or do you lie and say that you never took the money in order to save your friend from faded feelings and a damaged friendship? In this situation Kant would have you tell the truth because lying in general is fast so if it is immoral in one situation, it is immoral in all situations no progeny the circumstances.Another problem with Kants theory is that it creates contradictories since there is no inhabit for exceptions even though some duties conflict with each other. An example I will use to show is this from the record book in Numbers 104-6 Who will give us meat to eat? they said. Think of the lean we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic Here we are wasting away, stripped of everything there is nothing but manna for us to look at Here, the Israelites are complaining about their new germ of solid food which God provided for them, because it isnt tasty and that is the only thing they have to eat.The Israelites are contradicting their new found emancipation by wishing for the food they had back in Egypt when they were enslaved under the Pharaoh. Should they be thankful for their newfound freedom even though they have bad food or should they desire the good food they had while they were enslaved? This is a contradiction. Kant seems to only focus on the motives for our actions in moral situations versus the actual outgrowths of our actions (which is kind of the point in acting or not acting in a dutiful way).There are many times in which we have good intentions for a situation but what ends up being the return of those intentions are abysmal. For example, film a family member is terminally ill and is in constant hurting on a daily basis. There is no hope of a cure or for the pain to diminish your family member must pay the pain until the illness kills them. What if your family member asked you to aid in their plan to hold suicide in order to escape their pain? Say you come to the decision to help them after deciding it is the morally right thing to do.Without thinking of the outcome of the situation, you are soon found guilty of a felony charge of aiding in a suicide. Even though you had good intentions, the outcome of a person dying with the help of another person intelligibly outweighs the good and the outcome of the act is just as important as the decision itself. Overall, morality is too complex and full of exceptions to situations so that specific decision procedures wont work. Kant believes that morality necessitates that we do the morally right thing because it is rig ht, and for no other reason.He also believes that we should account ourselves to the same standards we would require of everyone else so that we arent placing exceptions for our own benefit. We must use our reason to come to our own conclusions about good will and ignore our predispositions even if they tend to point in the right direction. An action or decision is only intrinsically worthy because of your ought to do it, because of your obligation to do it. I think what Kant was trying to aim at was the importance of a persons character (acting the right way even when you may not want to). Only the actions done from our obligations have any value.They have value because we will them from our obligations not because of the goal we try and achieve or the outcome we intend to happen. We have obligations to each other and our actions are right when we are correctly motivated in the face of every obstacle holding us from those obligations. It isnt easy being unbiased by our predisposit ions or desires, but predispositions and desires are often conflicting with what is right. Works Cited The Holy Bible King James Version. Dallas, TX Brown Books Publishing, 2004. Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge University Press. 2012. Print.