Immanuel Kant: The Ethical Response to the Challenge of the Secularization Era

Abstract

This article attempts to align Kant’s ethics with the whole era of secularization that began in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that the global community still experiences today. The scale, depth, and lasting relevance of Kant’s ethics are largely due to the fact that it was a response to the unprecedented moral crisis that followed the Reformation. The issue of a “multicultural world” so topical today was first outlined at that time as the issue of a “multi-confessional Christian region.” During the course of religious wars, barbaric massacres of record size, and the resulting damage inflicted on people’s livelihood, economy, and culture, a large number of people were on the verge of immorality and anomie. Kant’s ethical doctrine is historically rooted in the attempt to understand and accurately interpret this situation. It is to that challenge that Kant’s project of a universal code of morality ultimately responds, even if only in a minimally, formally, and negatively outlined way (the concept of the categorical imperative).