IMMORALITY IS IRRATIONAL

Rationalist until age of 50, then read
Hume, who, in his own words,
“awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers”
Then wrote Critique of Pure Reason

Famous Epigram:
Man is the lawgiver of nature
Philosophical “Copernican Revolution”:
Assume knowledge or morality is real, then examine presuppositions that make it possible
Famous Distinction:
Phenomenal vs. Noumenal

Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals
Assumes morality is possible. So free-will presupposed: we can be autonomous.
Argument then is to find the basis by which we can rule ourselves: apodictic a priori synthetic truth: the concept of law itself:
The Categorical Imperative

1. person / thing
2. action / passion
3. moral-immoral / amoral
Persons and actions are characterized by the top term in each case, animals and behavior by the bottom term
Not all human beings are persons, nor viceversa.
Behavior ≠ Action.
Action is caused by agent, behavior is not.

4. reason / inclination
5. autonomy / heteronymy
Kant understands reason to influence action via the will.
Autonomy is freedom: not freedom
from natural law, but freedom to make laws for oneself.
Autonomy is necessary for morality.

6. duty / desire
7. categorical imperative / hypothetical imperative
Morality requires autonomy, self-rule by reason, which requires categorical imperative.

But what can reason command without any inclination?
[Hume: “Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions.”]
All that is left is the form of law itself.
SO: There is but one categorical imperative:
“…act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”]

Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.
[actually 2 or 3 other formulations]
Maxim: the principle on which one acts; the command given oneself by the will. Maxims are hypothetical imperatives.

[
Two sorts of failures of maxims
(re: universalizability):
Impossibility of maxim becoming universal law: lying, theft, …
- Perfect duties
Impossibility of willing maxim to become universal law
- Imperfect duties