2007-03-13 18:00:01 · 2 answers · asked by nur r 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Basically it is the theory that morality is acting only according to a maxim that you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. In other words, only do something if it is something that would produce good results if everyone else in the world also did it.
2007-03-13 18:07:13 · answer #1 · answered by Kory 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Kory said it well. Based on some discussion the other night, there's a nice "reductio ad absurdum" argument in connection with the categorical moral imperative. If it were OK to default on loans, and everyone did it, then (absurdly) no one would be making loans. Therefore it is not OK to default on loans. This puts the CMI in a negative form: don't do what would be impossible to do if everyone did it.
What the 2 variations have in common is a nice way to sum up the CMI: "What if everyone did it?"
2007-03-14 01:56:10 · answer #2 · answered by Philo 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋