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Immanuel
Kant on an immoral society
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/652808]
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QUOTE: A society that is
not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is
simply immoral.
AUTHOR: Immanuel Kant (German
pronunciation: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a
German philosopher from Königsberg (today Kaliningrad of Russia), researching,
lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th
Century Enlightenment. At the time, there were major successes and advances in
the sciences (for example, Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Robert
Boyle) using reason and logic. But this stood in sharp contrast to the
skepticism and lack of agreement or progress in empiricist philosophy. Kant’s
magnum opus, the Critique of Pure
Reason, aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he
took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end
an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support
what he saw as futile theories, while opposing the skepticism and idealism of
thinkers such as Descartes, Berkeley and Hume. He said that ‘it always remains
a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things
outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs
to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory
proof’. Kant proposed a ‘Copernican Revolution’, saying that 'Up to now it has
been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ...let us
once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by
assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition'. Kant published other
important works on religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy and history. These
included the Critique of Practical
Reason (Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft, 1788), which deals with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790), which
looks at aesthetics and teleology. He aimed to resolve disputes between
empirical and rationalist approaches. The former asserted that all knowledge
comes through experience; the latter maintained that reason and innate ideas
were prior. Kant argued that experience is purely subjective without first
being processed by pure reason. He also said that using reason without applying
it to experience will only lead to theoretical illusions. The free and proper
exercise of reason by the individual was both a theme of the Enlightenment, and
of Kant's approaches to the various problems of philosophy. His ideas
influenced many thinkers in Germany during his lifetime. He settled, and moved
philosophy beyond, the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. The
philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer amended and developed
the Kantian system, thus bringing about various forms of German idealism. He is
seen as a major figure in the history and development of philosophy. German and
European thinking progressed after his time, and his influence still inspires
philosophical work today.
CHECK THESE THREE PREVIOUS
BLOG POSTS:
1.
IMMANUEL KANT ON THE DEATH PENALTY [ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK]
2. IMMANUEL
KANT’S PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE]
3. IMMANUEL
KANT ON BLOOD GUILT [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE]
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