What is Kants argument for ethics?

Answer 1

If you are referring to his categorical imperative, he believes that it is the supreme moral principle that is discovered by reason. It is called the categorical imperative because it's commands are absolute. There are two distinct versions that are identified, and a third that combines the first two.. The first is, one should only act on the maxim that you would want to be a universal law. This principle gives you a way of deciding whether an act is right or wrong. The second imperative, is called the formula of the end in itself. You never treat human beings as a means to an end, but always as an end to their benefit. These imperatives don't apply to animals. The third is the principle is the formula of autonomy, this a combination of the first two.

Answer 2

Kant led a reaction to the deterministic thinking that gathered force from the early triumphs of science. The reaction became the 'romantic movement' which developed at the end of the 18th Century.

Kant argued that there were two aspects to reality: one was the world as it appeared to observation and entered into thought, the other was the world as it really was, independently of any conceptual framework of an observer. In observing and thinking about the world, human beings apply categorization