IMMANUEL KANT:

DUTY-BASED
ETHICS
IMMANUEL KANT
(1724-1804)
• He was born on April 22, 1724 in Konisberg,
Prussia, or what is now Kaliningrad, Russia.
• Immanuel Kant was the fourth of nine children
born to Johann George Cant, a harness maker, and
Anna Regina Cant.
• Kant focused on ethics, the philosophical study of
moral actions. He proposed a moral law called the
“Categorical Imperative”
KANTIAN DUTY-BASED (DEONTOLOGY)
ETHICS
• The term deontology comes from the Greek word deon, means duty.
• The theory of deontology states we are morally obligated to act in
accordance with a certain set of principles and rules regardless of
outcome.
• In religious deontology, the principles derived from divine
commandments so that under religious laws, we are morally
obligated not to steal, lie, or cheat.
• Consequence DO NOT MATTER
GOOD WILL
• Is the only good without qualification, i.e. the only intrinsic
good.
• Kant describes the good will as a will that acts duty as a “good-
in-itself”

DUTY
• Is the necessity of acting out of reverence for universal law.
THE THEORY OF DUTY
• Moral Agent : an agent is a person who performs an action; a moral
agent is a person with a capacity to act morally.
• Maxim : Rule or Principle
• Will : The faculty of deciding, choosing or acting.
MAXIM- is a concise expression of a fundamental moral rule of
principle, whether considered as objective or subjective contingent on
one’s philosophy.

• Act only on maxims which you can will to be universal laws of

nature.
• Always treat the humanity in a person as an end, and never as a
means merely.
• So act as if you were a member off an ideal kingdom of ends in
which you were both subject and sovereign at the same time.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
• Is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral
philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
• A moral law that is unconditional or absolute for all agents, the
validity or claim of which does not depend on any ulterior motive or
end.
• For Kant, there are was only one such categorical imperative, which
he formulated in various ways. “Act only according to that maxim
whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a
universal law”.
HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE
• Kant means that the commands depend upon the goals to be
fulfilled. These are particular goals that depend upon personal
situations, particular human goals and desires and dispositions.
Hypothetical imperatives are commands that apply only in
particular circumstances, for particular people who happen to have
these desires, these goals.