Essay About Practical Reason And Empirical Knowledge

Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant
-Deontological Ethics
-Born in Königsberg, city in East Prussia now part of north east Germany
-Experienced poverty and a strict religious household
-From age 8 his routine was study and work
-When he was 46 he was hired at a university as a professor of logic and metaphysics
Theoretical Reason
-Wanted to clarify how it is that humans come to know things.
Practical Reason
-Practical Reason moves beyond scientific and empirical knowledge to the moral dimension guiding human behaviour
-With knowledge humans act on impulse affected by the laws of nature but also out of conscious choice based on principles
First Category of Theoretical Reason
-What people actually do.
Second Category of theoretical Reason
-What People Ought to do.
Maxim= Universal Rule
Behaviour= Universal Rule
(Downloading music illegally-imagine creating a rule where everyone was to download music illegally)
-We know the effect alcohol has on our body
Practical Reason *
-We know we ought not to drink and drive
Kants Ethics
-Good is the sum of moral life
-Concerned about the certainty of the principles of ethical reasoning. *Ethics can not arrive at the same type of certainty as physics and math.
-He said that there are 3 areas of interest: God, Freedom, and Immortality.
*We need God, Freedom and Immortality to be able to pursue and attain the supreme good.
God- the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe