Kants philosophy

-Shaun K. Somarajan

The following paper is based on my basic understanding of the

German philosopher Immanuel Kant and his general ideas on the
human mind and moral values. Although the main focus of this
paper will be on his Categorical Imperative, a few lines will be
attributed to what Kant referred to as, The Copernican
Revolution that he brought about in Metaphysics.
As a foreword I would like to thank my philosophy professor,
Lasha Matiashvili, for introducing me to philosophy and the
wonderful world of logic and reason. Without him this paper would
not have been possible.
Kant was born and brought up in Prussia (in what is now modern
day Russia) and spent almost his entire life there. It was there
that he explored his ideas on metaphysics and reason and
faculties of the human mind and brought about his Copernican
Revolution. According to Kant, the problems of metaphysics can
be resolved by simply looking around the other way; that we
make reality, instead of reality making us. Reality conforms to our
concepts made by ourselves, because otherwise we cannot
experience them, as Kant said in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant said that our experience of something or phenomenon- is

our subjective experience created by our faculties. It is not
noumenon or the real world- because it is impossible for us to
perceive that something without applying ideas and concepts to
it. Therefore we have to take it upon faith that there is a real
world -a noumenal something- but our interpretation (or
knowledge) of it comes from the ideas and concepts we apply to
our intuition of it by using our faculties of reason and
understanding.
Moving on we come to the real purpose of this paper and that is
Kants infamous Categorical Imperative. Now in simple terms it
states that a person must do a good deed simply because it is
good, not because it makes him look good or brings him
happiness. Any reward he receives is only an added benefit, and
thus it is different from the hypothetical imperative which states
people act for rewards and that is the way the world works- and
the end is important, not the act. It also goes on to state that we
must treat human beings as ends and not means, because we
must only do to others which we may wish upon ourselves. That
is if we lie to others (or do something morally wrong) then we
must accept the same to happen to us; furthermore we must be
ready to live in such an immoral world. And so we must act solely
for the purpose of executing that act of virtue, regardless of any
consequences. And we know what an act of virtue is by
developing our reason through education and discovering
universal moral laws.

Kant stressed on a persons concept of freedom; that a moral act

only becomes virtuous if a person executed that act based on a
moral axiom that he himself independently discovered using his
own reason. Any other influence, that is, acting under obligation
to someone or something makes the person a slave to that
obligation; he is not free in that sense. He is not acting upon his
own moral obligation but upon someone elses. So being a
rational being, human beings can formulate their own moral laws
and unlike animals can refrain/restrain themselves from their
biological needs and cravings and even sacrifice their pleasure for
an act of virtue. This was the whole concept of Immanuel Kants
Categorical Imperative. Kant used this opportunity to bring in the
idea of God; that there would be a perfect world after death
created by God where virtue and happiness could go hand in
hand, where one wouldnt have to be sacrificed for the other.
This is the whole notion of Kants Categorical Imperative; moral
values, freedom and rationality all interconnected and creating a
morally perfect world. In conclusion, Kants genius lay in being
able to predict much about what modern psychology says about
the human mind; how reality is made by how we perceive it.
Perhaps death is that point when we are stripped of all faculties;
even from the basic sense of intuition beyond which we are
incapable of imagining now.