Freedom and Reason in Kant
Alice Furnari
24 /2/97
Morality, Kant says, cannot be regarded as a set of rules which prescribe
the means necessary to the achievement of a given end; its rules must be obeyed
without consideration of the consequences that will follow from doing so or not.
A principle that presupposes a desired object as the determinant of the will
cannot give rise to a moral law; that is, the morality of an act of will cannot
be determined by the matter or content of the will for when the will is
materially determined the question of its morality does not arise.
This consideration leads Kant to one of his most important theses. If the
moral character of willing is not determined by the content of what is willed,
it must be determined by the form:" If a rational being can think of his maxims
as universal laws, he can do so only by considering them as principles which
contain the determining ground of the will because of their form and not......
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Approximate Word Count: 1502
Approximate Pages: 6 (260 words per double-spaced page) |