Another English lesson, another existential crisis. Today I have been learning about Immanuel Kant and his concept of categorical imperatives. Kant is interested in morals and in his opinion, morals aren't connected to religion, they are connected to us as people.
This ties in with our exploration of the concept of self because morals make up the unique reasoning why we do the things we do.
There are two categorical imperatives which Kant uses to summarise how we as humans have morals.
1. “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. A maxim is the action that you are thinking about taking. For example, I could be thinking about stealing somebody's bike. By this moral logic, I can only steal this bike if I think everyone should always be allowed to steal. Obviously thats a dumb idea, because that would just cycle around and around, so by Kants logic, I should not steal that bike.
2. “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means.” This means it is wrong to use other humans for the sole purpose of your own benefit. Obviously we use things as a mean all the time, such as the computer your are reading this on, or the bike I definitely didn't steal in order to get around, but it is morally wrong to use a person and only treat them as a way to get what you want. We use people all the time too, such as teachers to pass on knowledge, or chefs to make food for restaurants, but we still acknowledge their humanity and know there is more to them than that singular purpose.
These two ideas come together to form the idea that we treat others as human and don't do to them what we wouldn't want them doing to us.
Ps. No bikes were stolen in the making of this blog post.
