PHIL 1612 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Practical Reason, Minimax, Glendon College
13 Mar 2016
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Two significant points: (1) an imperative is a command like >shut the door= or >give me the pen=. (2) as an ought it is independent, objectively independent, of what we want or desire. Here kant captures the notion that what is morally right is often what we don=t want to do. We deserve moral praise when we act from our duty motivated by a respect for the moral law, a respect that arises strictly from the rationality of the moral law itself which is the categorical imperative. Feelings of love, pity, sympathy, loyalty, friendship are irrelevant for morality and do not merit any moral praise. For example, if you saw pictures of starving children and were moved by pity and compassion to donate money to help feed them, you are not necessarily acting morally. All this shows is that sometimes our feelings and desires coincides with what is the right thing to do.
