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RE: A Simplified Glimpse Into Immanuel Kant's Moral Philosophy!

in #life7 years ago

I am curious of what your own opinions are on Kant's philosophy? I myself am quite conflicted. I have to laud him for being the first to make a proper attempt to describe moral philosophy from first principles. At the same time I believe he tried too hard and pushed on too far so that he would reach a full synthesis with the tools he had to his disposal. To me, while often being a good heuristic for moral conduct, it seems clear that there cannot strictly exist anything like a true categorical imperative, except for ones that are so vague as to almost not mean anything at all.

I think it is comparable to Marx and Freud, both astute observers and ambitious theorists but ultimately wrong in most of their conclusions. By trying to be too general while basing their theories on too little quantitative data, they fall short of actually describing the world accurately, as does Kant, e.g. in the thought experiment of hiding jews from Nazi officers and refusing to lie to save their life because lying must be wrong according to the cathegorical imperative.