Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Kant's Categorical Imperative from my POV.

What can I say about this. I would like to say that I see his point of view that asks what the underlying principle, the maxim, of your action is and points out that you should only commit that action if you could wish that this underlying maxim became law for everyone within the society, so everyone always acts on it. I think life is the way it is due to that we don’t follow that line of thought, or law. If we all follow the same set of rules and actually abide by them, maybe, we might be in a better place as a society today. But as humans, born out of anarchy we are not meant to work like that. We are selfish creatures born to be just that.  
Now, I do see one problem of Kant's CI: what about the means that justify the end? Like our Philosophy teacher mentioned, "What if a maxim is to never lie; what if you were harboring a Jewish person (back in Hitler times) and Hitler's soldiers came knocking on your door asking for any Jewish people. What would you do." You know giving them up is basically killing them. But, at the same time you shouldn’t lie (under the CI assumption). So, yea, that’s the problem. Which means you have to give up on that sense of "morality" you have been following all along: the sense that you shouldn’t get some innocent person killed because its wrong. The hard part, in order to live under the "Never lie" maxim, is to get everyone to always, and no matter what, follow that maxim, that way you aren't the only asshole.

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