Summary: Kant's Deontology

Read the summary and the most important questions on Kant's Deontology

• 1 Week 1

• 1.3 Hoofdstuk 1 Groundwork

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• Is having good character traits the same as a good will?

  Qualities of good charactertraits aren't absolute or unconditional worthy, because they have to relate to a good will, if they should be qualified as 'good'.

• What is the axiom of natural constitution?

  No organ will be found that isn't perfectly adapted to its purpose -
  so reason is to be defined to obtain knowledge and happiness.
  The purpose of the will is to act fairly according the CI - influenced by reason / Vernünft.

• What is the axiom of the reason, its natural purpose?

  Reason is given to us a s a practical faculty, one that is meant to have an influence on the will. It's proper function must be to produce a will that is good in itself and not good as a means.
  Nature has its own capacities (distributed and suitable to the functions they are to perform)
  Means are better provided for by instinct
  Reason and it alone can produce a will that is good in itself.

• The good will must be the condition of all others - even the desire of happiness.

  Beneficience from duty is a kind of sacrifice my own preference, due to the wellbeing of others.
  The will is the source of respect, not the outcome of action or any other preference - see it as favorable to my interestes, can't be the source of respect. 
  What can get respect and can thus serve as a command is something that isn't a consequence of my volition.  

• What sorts of love are there?

  1. Principle love that lies in the will and in principles of action;
  2. Pathological love that lies in the direction the person's feelings and tender sympathies take. 

• What are the two propositions of morality?

  1. Duty
  2. Maxim
  Consequences:
  3. Principle of the Good will, which obeys the Law (CI)
  
  
  1. For an action to have genuine moral worth it must be done from duty;
  2. An action that is done from duty doesn't get its moral value from the purpose that's to be achieved through it but from the maxim that it involves - giving the reason why the person acts thus.
  3. To have a duty is to be required to act in a certain way out of respect for law.

• What is a maxim?

  A subjective principle of violation;
  The objective principle is the practal law itself.
  The which is obeyed has to relate to my maxim as a universal principle and guidance of the will. 
  The will is conformity the law accordingly the principle of CI and the universalizability of the maxims. 
  A maxim destroys itself as soon as it was made a universal law.

• Is it prudent to make a false promise?

  I ought never to act in such a way that I couldn't also will that the maxim on which I act should be a universal law.
  Maxim is based on fear of consequences;
  Being truthful from duty is an entirely different thing from being truthful out of fear of bad consequences; 

• What is the feature of the reason in common sense obeying the law?

  Reason issues inexorable commands without promising the preferences anything by way of recompense. 
  
  Herefrom a natural dialectic, an intellectual conflict or contradiction emerges; the reason and the preferences or desires.
  This undermines the very foundations of duty's laws, which is something that even ordinary practical reason can't, when it gets right down to it, call good.

• How can we inter-relate common-sense morality and philosophy?

  1. We could go along with common-sense moral judgments, and bring in philosophy;
  2. We could steer common sense away from its fortunate simplicity in practical matters, and lead it through philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction.