His moral philosophy is a philosophy of freedom. Without human freedom, thought Kant, moral appraisal and moral responsibility would be impossible. Kant believes that if a person could not act otherwise, then his or her act can have no moral worth.

Kant made the greatest breakthrough in metaphysics (and philosophy in general) since Plato and Aristotle. Moreover, he made it possible as science. Of all philosophers, it was Kant that probably had the biggest impact on modern philosophy.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment. His comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent philosophy, especially the various schools of Kantianism and idealism.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher during the Enlightenment era of the late 18th century. His best-known work is the ‘Critique of Pure Reason.

The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature. Kant’s first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible.

The second and more famous argument makes use of the conclusion defended earlier that reason alone cannot move us to act. As we have seen, reason alone “can never immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T 458). Therefore morals cannot be derived from reason alone.

Sometimes if something is legal, it is not always moral, in fact, there are many things in which this is true. Kant’s and Aristotle’s theories of moral ethics are similar where they believe that morality is based on free will and freedom of choice.

Kant used the example of lying as an application of his ethics: because there is a perfect duty to tell the truth, we must never lie, even if it seems that lying would bring about better consequences than telling the truth.

To act of a “good will” means to act out of a sense of moral obligation or “duty.” In other words, the moral agent does a particular action not because of what it produces (its consequences) in terms of human experience, but because the agent recognizes by reasoning that it is the morally right thing to do and.

Kant does believe that, all other things being equal, it is better to be happy than to be miserable. And he wouldn’t think that looking out for our own happiness is immoral. Looking out for people’s happiness follows from their intrinsic and infinite value as autonomous, free, rational beings.

According to Aristotle, happiness consists in achieving, through the course of a whole lifetime, all the goods — health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc. — that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life. This requires us to make choices, some of which may be very difficult.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.