Immanuel Kant’s philosophical views of human nature and the ethical systems that govern human actions are primarily summed up in his composition of the “Categorical Imperative. ” By his own logic, Kant attempted to describe the mechanics of nature and the morality of mankind. As Mitchell states: Indeed, as Kant showed us, the world appears to operate according to the principle of cause and effect, and our shared agreement of this interpretation allows us to reason about the world. Mitchell, 259)
Through his exploration and definition of nature, Kant asserted that autonomy was a necessity which a creature must maintain in order to conceive a moral assessment of actions. This state of existence, he believed, was a capacity that is unique to mankind. Essentially, autonomy is what separates us from the animal kingdom. Kant validates this hypothesis by explaining that human wills are affected but not determined by bodily desires.
Therefore, human wills are then placed between non-rational animals (whose wills are determined by bodily desires) and divine beings (whose wills are determined by reason). Simply stated, human beings possessed a rational intuition that animals lacked and divine beings mastered. Kant believed that the “highest good” human beings could achieve is simultaneous happiness and complete virtue. While these connections hardly ever take place, simply because, by human nature they oppose one another, he believed it was humanities ultimate goal.
Kant’s definition of virtue is the strength that mankind harbors, guiding us to do what is morally right compared to what would make us physically or emotionally happy. He went on to proclaim that the purpose for human reason is to make us deserving of happiness, by assisting us to become virtuous. Kant intimately collaborates morality, reason and freedom throughout his philosophies. He expounded on this trinity by theorizing that ethical admiration can be achieved through moral actions that are performed freely.
An individual’s action is free if his own reason generated the maxim or principle from which that action was performed. (Kant) However, these actions cannot be persuaded by bodily desire, otherwise the actions are not free and lack the correct principles to be considered morally reasonable. Kant implies a connection exists between moral law and reason, through this connection he argues that reason dictates individuals should “act only in accordance with that maxim which you can at the same time will that it can become universal law. (Kant)
Mitchell, goes onto translate this theory by stating: All a person needed to do, Kant thought, was to consider whether a proposed action could serve as a universal law without self-contradiction. Kant called this principle the categorical imperative because it was an imperative (demanded action) and it was categorical (was necessary in itself). (Mitchell, 456) The categorical imperative was at heart, Kant’s moral calculator, in essence it was a system designed to test the principles of action, ensuring through rational thought, that an individual would make the correct ethical choice.
Another way of expressing Kant’s categorical imperative states that we must always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end. ” (Mitchell, 457) In contrast to the New Testament, the categorical imperative appears to equate to the commandment Jesus delivered during his sermon on the mount, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12) Kant’s personal views of self-respect, education and sociology undoubtedly kindled his philosophies of moral principles.
His powerful insights of life, nature, the cosmos, morality, time and space were all exceptionally impressive. Taking into account, he allegedly derived a life time of extraordinary concepts, limited to a single location, apparently never traveling more than ten miles from his hometown, is a remarkable phenomenon. While I believe Kant provided a logical foundation for philosophy to explore the concepts of ethics and morality, I also am left to wonder how much more he could have contributed, had he explored the more of the world and its ambiguous cultures.
Besides providing the world with the idea, “I think therefore I am”, which is essentially the foundation of his philosophies, Descartes expanded his theories of existence into a metaphysical dualism of mind and matter. One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes philosophy is his thesis that mind and body are really distinct—a thesis now called “mind-body dualism. ” He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body (that is, an extended, non-thinking thing), and therefore it is possible for one to exist without the other. Skirry)
Rene Descartes said that every material thing is defined by having extension, in other words, it occupies space. Therefore substance (matter) cannot share the same space with another things. For instance, both water and gas can be reduced to particles, so they each occupy a unique portion of space and have to be considered substance. Substance can then be understood to exist alone without requiring any other creature to exist, take for example, that a rock can exist all by itself.
That is, its existence is not dependent upon the existence of minds or other bodies; and, a rock can exist without being any particular size or shape. The Roots of Wisdom notes: What Descartes can be sure of is only the contents of his own mind. In philosophy this is called solipsism, the belief that only minds and their contents exist, everything else is a perception of that mind. (Mitchell 232) Hence, the thesis that mind and body are really distinct just means that each could exist all by themselves without any other creature, including one another.
T]here is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete…. By contrast, there is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and this very fact makes me understand that it is divisible.
This one argument would be enough to show me that the mind is completely different from the body…. (Descartes). When it comes to the topic of the mind, Descartes observed that emotions, passions, beliefs and thoughts are generated from the mind and not only share similarity but cannot physically take form, they are not extended and do not occupy space. Therefore, they must be a non-material substance, or thought-like things.
Applying common sense to make the argument Descartes pronounced, if you can measure something in space, as having a length, breadth, width etc. then it must be a material substance. If you can’t measure it, then it must be a thought-like substance. This simplistic analogy serves as the basis of his dual-substance doctrine, with an end state proclaiming that a human being is both matter and mind.
Through his treatise, Passions of the Soul, Descartes describes passion to be “the perceptions, sensations, or commotions of the soul which we relate particularly to the soul and are caused, maintained, and strengthened by some movement of the spirits. The spirits, he is referring to, are what Descartes identifies as “animal spirits”, and serve as the nucleolus to understanding his theories. He argued that only humans have minds, and that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism or duality proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Mitchell states: Unlike matter, mind was free to act independently on its behalf.
As free entities, human minds could make their own decisions and be held accountable as moral agents. (Mitchell 236) Descartes described six primary passions; wonder-love-hate-desire-joy and sadness, all others are either composed from the six passions or they are species of them. The passions that Descartes studied are in reality actions of the body on the soul, so as the soul suffers the influence of the body it is entirely subject to the influence of the passions. Descartes suggested that the pineal gland is “the seat of the soul” and it was the object that linked the mind to the body.
He concluded that a soul is unitary, and unlike many areas of the brain the pineal gland also appeared to be unitary. In summary, Descartes believed that only human beings possessed a soul and specifically because humans possessed a soul they suffer. Unfortunately Descartes died from pneumonia at an early age, before he could go on to validate some of his controversial theories, ultimately leaving the rest of the world to continue his work, in support or debate of it.
