PHIL 160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Immanuel Kant, Sentience, Empiricism
2 Dec 2016
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Immanuel kant: kant is both an absolutist and a rationalist when it comes to ethics. Absolutism: there is one true morality with a consistent set of moral principles. Rationalism: we can know moral metaphysical truths apart from or prior to experience. Begin with human nature and construct your theory of morality based on that: kantian rationalism. Morality has nothing to do with sentience (capacity to feel pleasure and pain) but is about the pure use of reason. Reason is what makes human beings moral: kant"s goal is to remove moral truth from the zone of contingency and empirical observation. Contingent: not logically necessary; dependent upon something else. What is contingent is outside of our control. If a, then b: human has a divided nature. A physical nature; we are driven by our appetites and desires. Appetites and inclinations are contingent features of the individual.
