"GROUNDING FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS" (IMMANUEL KANT).   Term Paper ID:25250 Get This Paper Free! or Buy This Paper

Essay Subject: Examines views on freedom, will, duty, morality, reason, reality.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines views on freedom, will, duty, morality, reason, reality. Paper Introduction: In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant in Section Three discusses his concept of freedom, beginning with the idea of the will as a kind of causality. The idea that freedom is perfect rationalism is expressed by Kant, and Kant indeed indicates how some actions are determined while others are subject to free will. He shows that those that are performed out of free will are ethically superior. Thus, Kant connects his idea of freedom to his idea of moral duty. Kant distinguishes between acts that are performed out of duty and acts which are performed for the sake of duty, holding that those acts performed in accordance with duty but not from duty have no moral worth. In making this distinction, Kant is setting forth a moral principle in keeping with his view that morality does not derive from nature but from the mind, and it is what is intended that is Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. From one standpoint, man is a finite rational being and must seehimself as belonging to the intelligible world. Through introspection we know ourselves as we appear, but weassume that there is a reality behind this appearance. Freedom does not mean an absence from law, then, even ifit is not a property of will in accordance with the laws of nature. Every person, animal, and object lives by physical lawswhich they cannot change, and there is no choice involved. The view that we must act out of duty is one which Kant believeseveryone would reach if they reflected upon the issue. Kant finds that while the universemay have a mechanistic explanation for motions and the creation of matter,everyone also experiences a sense of moral duty which implies that peoplepossess freedom in their behavior, unlike some other elements in nature.The problem was how to reconcile these two seemingly contradictoryinterpretations of events, one indicating necessity and other indicatingfreedom. There can be no exceptions to the law, whichapplies at all times in all situations. The concept of causality involves theconcept of laws by which something we call cause has to entail somethingelse, the effect. He states that he has arguedthat rational beings must presuppose their own freedom, and he has arguedthat from this presupposition there necessarily follows the principle ofautonomy and consequently the corresponding categorical imperative. When one acts froma sense of duty, one demonstrates a good will, a will that is good initself. The idea that freedom is perfect rationalism isexpressed by Kant, and Kant indeed indicates how some actions aredetermined while others are subject to free will. Kant says it is sufficient to prove that arational being can act under the presupposition of freedom, under thebelief that freedom is possible. The reverence for moral law is areverence for the universal. Metaphysical thought was opposed to scientific thought, and thesubject matter of metaphysical thought was freedom and morality. Kant distinguishes betweenacts that are performed out of duty and acts which are performed for thesake of duty, holding that those acts performed in accordance with duty butnot from duty have no moral worth. He says that we do indeed take an interest in moral excellence,but the reason we do so is only because we assume that the moral law isbinding. Kant states that morality is derived fromfreedom, and that for this to be true, morality must be valid for allrational beings. Kant offers as a counter example a man whose life is so onerousthat he would be inclined to seek death to escape from it, but the man doesnot give in to this inclination and instead preserves his life because heis swayed by duty and duty alone. Indeed, it is best whenduty and inclination coincide in the individual so that he or she acts fromboth at once. We have a dualsense of what we can know. Reason shows a spontaneity which isindependent of sense. This necessitates proving that the will of a rationalbeing as such is necessarily free, but this can never be proved by anyexperience of human action. Kant saw the drift of scientific thought as moving toward amechanical model for all of reality, including human nature, which wouldmean that all events could be explained in terms of cause and effect. This leads to the view that freedom can benoting else but autonomy, meaning the property that the will has of being alaw in itself. It isinstead causality with reference to immutable laws, for without this fact,free will would be absurd. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Non-rational beings can act causally only as they are caused to do soby something other than themselves. Kant says that this explanation of freedom is negative and thus notvaluable as an insight regarding its essence, but he says a positiveconcept arises form it that is. Moral worth is not conferred by the outcome ofthese actions--doing good works because people will be helped are notautomatically moral because of a good outcome. Freedom belongs tothis causality so as to make it effective while independent of anydetermination by outside causes. On the one hand we have the spontaneous powerof understanding which produces from itself such concepts as that of causeand effect. This expresses nothing more than the maxim that we must actaccording to no other maxim than that which can at the same time haveitself as a universal law. The good will that iscreated by moral actions is the only good without qualification and mustdevelop from a reverence for the law. Appearances are all that can be known by us, but wecan assume that behind the appearances are the things in themselves. Kantreconciled the two. Thisrelates to Kant's conception of the moral law, and he says that to act forthe sake of duty means to act out of reverence for the moral law. Kant says this is precisely the formula of thecategorical imperative, so the categorical imperative is free will. Thus, Kant connectshis idea of freedom to his idea of moral duty. Physical and moral laws are bothuniversal, and this raises the issue of what differentiates the two.Physical laws are different because there is no volition involved in livingup to these laws. This distinction applies to knowledge we have ofourselves. As Kant describes it, though, it is evident thatthe man who has inclinations against his duty and who acts out of dutyshows more clearly that he has acted out of duty than inclination. Kant makes the distinction between things as they appear to us andthings as they are in themselves, a distinction between appearances andthings in themselves. In making this distinction, Kant issetting forth a moral principle in keeping with his view that morality doesnot derive from nature but from the mind, and it is what is intended thatis important rather than what occurs without intent, even if the action isthe same. To define morality isone thing, and to demand that we take an interest in the subject isanother. This is what is meant by naturalnecessity as opposed to freedom. In this way Kant removes the suspicion of a vicious circle, andhe does so by indicating different approaches to knowledge, approaches thatare necessary. Work CitedKant, Immanuel. In Kant's analysis, acting out of duty becomes acting out of asense of law, meaning moral law. This means that he can neverconceive of the causal action of his own will except under the idea offreedom. Duty serves to make theindividual maintain his health, though there may also be an inclination todo so. This necessitates free will,for without free will no action could be considered moral or immoral. Unless the individual is acting because of a moral duty, theaction cannot be considered a moral action. There are many things we do out of duty that we also do out ofinclination. When man thinks of himself as a member of both theintelligible and the sensible world, he has to recognize the principle ofautonomy as a categorical imperative. This is a moral decision that possessesgenuine ethical content in Kant's estimation. Kant says the will is a kind of causality, as noted, and it belongsto living beings to the degree that they are rational. Thisprovides a rough distinction between a sensible world and an intelligibleworld, a world seen through the senses and a world we can never know butcan determine by reason. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981.----------------------- 3 Reason is the power of ideas, and it produces concepts whichgo beyond sense altogether. Moral actionsare of a different order because there is a choice involved, and to havemoral worth such actions must be performed out of a sense of duty and outof a reverence for the law. We perceive ourselves to belong to the intelligibleworld and as subject to laws which have their basis in reason alone. Therefore, he mustconceive his will as free from determination by sensuous causes and thus asbeing obedient to laws based on reason alone. We take an interest because we think it applies to us and that itdoes so necessarily. Kant cites the preservation of one's life, for instance, andnotes that this is a duty but that the individual is also strongly inclinedto do so. Kantsays that in this argument he had formulated the principle of morality moreprecisely than had been done before, but he then asks why he should subjecthimself and other rational beings to this principle. This is a higher level of development than when theindividual makes a choice between inclination and duty, with inclinationclearly at war with duty. Duty is therefore not merely the overcoming of evil tendencies orinclinations but something much more than this. There are many acts which are indirectly a duty, and Kant cites thesecuring of one's own happiness as such. Whenthe two coincide, it is more difficult to say which has prevailed, and itmust be duty that prevails for the action to have a moral value. Kant's argument concerning the importance of practical reason and theneed for the will to see itself as free leads to a circularity in theargument which Kant recognized and addressed. In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant in SectionThree discusses his concept of freedom, beginning with the idea of the willas a kind of causality. He shows that those thatare performed out of free will are ethically superior. Thisapproach would also exclude any elements that could not be fit into thismethod. As a rational agent, man conceives of himself as free andas a member of the intelligible world and thus must recognize the principleof autonomy. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or We can write a Custom Essay just for you.