PHIL 3000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Practical Reason
30 May 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The moral law is whatever is ft for universal legislation. All actions by rational agents amount to a kind of universal maxim. 4:402 - if i can act from a maxim that would work as a universal law, then i should do it. If you make a false promise, your maxim is the following: it is okay to liw to get out of a difficult situations. if you tell the truth, your maxim is : rational agents should only make true promises. (4:403) Lying maxim cannot be made universal because it produces a contradiction such that all promises become meaningless. This universialization requirement is what kant calls the categorical imperative. Never right to lie - it is your duty to tell the truth. Why cal it categorical imperative: maxims are categorical statment, we are given the imperative to make categorical out actions. Bj: kant is implicitly connecting morality to a particular notion of reason: reason considers universals.
