What was Kant's categorical Imperative?

Question

I was reading a philosophy text and it keeps refering to this what is it?

Answer 1

Kant's categorical Imperative was UNIVERSALISABILITY. Sorry the word looks made up but basically that is it! Kant argued that for an action to be morally valid we should be able to advocate that it becomes a universal law. For instance the common example given is lying, if one believes lying is a morally valid act, one should be happy if everybody lied. This however would mean that one would never be able to communicate effectively as their would one would always have to expect the other party(ies) to be lying. This advocating lying defeats itself as communication becomes impossible. The other example is broken promises; if it is ok to break promises, then one should be able to advocate breaking promises for all, this obviously would be the end of the social institution of making promises thus self defeating and thus morally wrong or invalid. This is the essence of the Categorical Imperative however Kant's ethical philosophy is still quite a contentious issue. Many consider Kant's reasoning flawed however there have been many attempts to modify Kant's totally deontological approach to be more flexible, and thus appealing to modern readers. However Kant believed the Categorical Imperative is an intrinsic part of moral philosophy.

There are some problems with this such if lying is wrong, should you lie if you were hiding Jews in the second World War and Nazis came knocking asking if you were harbouring any jews?? The Imperative on lying says No you should tell the truth however this clearly can not be morally right, as you would be sending them to their deaths. One answer could be to make lying to save a life a categorical imperative. I personally don't see any problem if everybody lied if it was to save a life and I can't see how that undermines communication!? Some do think the categorical imperative is dependent upon the individuals reasoning but Kant woudl argue it is down to the logic of the assertion. Therefore lying, if everybody is free to lie any time the feel like it communication would be pointless and so lying would be self defeating as no communication of either truth or lies would be possible.

Answer 2

Um, well...
The hypothetical imperative is like: If you want A to happen, you must do B.
But the catagorical imperative is that you should do C because C is the right thing to do.

And there are...3? I think? conditions or maxims that you have to apply to something in order to decide if it is a catagorical imperative, and therefore (according to Kant) morally right. The only one I remember is that it has to be universafiable.

To be honest, read another answer, or have a look on wikipedia. But thanks, I feel like I have remembered something now! Well... kind of.

Answer 3

Thanks for this question, enjoyed reading up on it.
Guru's link was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
Unsure if it is inherently flawed, but certainly it seems that it would be impossible for mankind to determine any given categorical Imperative, they're all hypothetical depending on your viewpoint.
I read it as a 'Categorical Imperative is a moral statement which is absolute, no question ie: Murder is wrong. This would seem to be a CI, but in fact it would depend on the reasoning and viewpoint of the individual (self defence, armed forces etc) Therefore it is a Hypothetical Imperative, it depends on the viewpoint at the time.
So, because of that I would say there can be no CI, they are all HI.
This is one area where law is so difficult, are the laws of the land CI or HI?
But this is just how I understand it, I stand to be corrected.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

Before you get too involved in the meaning, does it help to know that the Categorical Imperative is flawed reasoning?

Wikipedia has a short piece on this.