Kantian Ethics Scholars

Question 1

Hegel

Answer 1

• Example of the poor and of ownership of property
• It is unnatural for people to subordinate their desires to pure reason
• “nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion”

Question 2

Nietzsche

Answer 2

• You must accept Kant’s claim that humans live on after death, and that some sort of God exists, for his system to have any normative force or commanding power.
• Kant places too much trust in the ability for human reason to discern universal laws, there is no reason to believe a finite being can discover eternal moral laws.

Question 3

Anscombe

Answer 3

• The concept of deontology and universal laws is far too rigid to be of any practical use in real world situations.
• The concept of moral law implying a moral lawgiver doesn’t have any relevance to the secular society that we live in.

Question 4

Knight

Answer 4

-Claims that the CI is contradictory, it claims that morality os known a priori but goes onto say that in the Formula of a Kingdom of Ends that humans have an active part in rule setting.
“The theory of the categorical imperative is, moreover, inconsistent. For the human is the highest lawgiving authority, and yet subject to precepts enjoined on it”

Question 5

Karol Woytla on Kant

Answer 5

, “Nobody can use a persons as a means towards an end, no human being, nor yet Got the creator” “each is an inherent component of the natural moral order”