Abstract

This paper makes a contemporary appraisal of the concepts of the ‘Goodwill’ and the ‘Categorical Imperative’ in Kant’s formalistic, deontological ethics. Kant posits that the rightness of an act does not depend at all on the value of its consequences. For him, in order to know whether an act is right or wrong, we need only see whether it is in accordance with a valid moral rule. The test for a valid moral rule, as he conceives it, is purely formalistic. For a moral rule to be valid, it must pass the test of the foundational, supreme principle or ultimate criterion of morality, which Kant calls the “Categorical Imperative”. On this score, the paper, seeks to address the problem of ethical formalism and foundationalism associated with Kant’s theory in view of the contemporary challenge of ethical pluralism and destructive postmodernism. The objective of the paper is to reconcile with Kantianism with the contemporary shift from moral foundationalism and universalism to anti-foundationalism and relativism.

Highlights

  • Moral philosophers have grappled with the philosophical problem of what should underlie a valid moral principle

  • It should have been the other way round. This seems to be a misplacement of order because it is quite difficult to justify why virtue should enjoy such priority. This vulnerable point we find in virtue ethics is similar to the problem with the Divine command Theory which holds that what makes an action right is the fact that it is commanded by the 'gods', because such commands are what creates our duty

  • The inherent problems involved in abandoning Kant’s foundationalism and adopting a relativistic, postmodernist pluralistic ethics lies in the hard choice between contradictory indications

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Moral philosophers have grappled with the philosophical problem of what should underlie a valid moral principle. In Kant’s moral philosophy, the rightness or wrongness of an act is not in any way dependent on the value or worth of its consequence(s) For this reason, his ethics could be classified as a non-consequentialist ethical theory. Kant wanted to show how we can establish an ultimate criterion for the validity of moral rules on a priori ground which is “pure” from all empirical considerations Once this is achieved, its consequent application to specific rules and acts may require the use of empirical knowledge. One of the important implications of Kant’s ethics is that the search for an ultimate criterion for the validity of moral rules is an attempt to build morality on an objective principle By establishing such rules on a prior grounds makes morality ratiocentric and confines the class of beings worthy of moral considerability to human beings alone

The Concept of Goodwill
The Three Propositions of Morality
The Categorical Imperative
Formulations of the Categorical Imperative
Critique of Kant
Kant and Contemporary Moral Philosophy
CONCLUSION
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