PHIL 2120 Lecture 8: unit 8 deontology notes
12 Apr 2017
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Are there absolute moral rules or duties: this is only possible if there are beings which have the capacity to give themselves absolute moral rules, as well as to consistently subject themselves to these rules. This is not necessarily a human being, they just must be capable of rational nature. Kant refers to agents with rational nature as persons. A person is not necessarily a human being. Logical self-defeating: meaning something doesn"t add up, something the mind can"t do, he says that we cannot dream up morality if it were something we couldn"t understand. If it were logically self-defeating then it would not work. Our rational capacities tell us then that morality comes from situations such as truth telling when lying would discredit the truth as a whole. It is right to lie, and it is right to not lie .
