Episode Details
Back to Episodes
What Makes an Action Moral? Kant on Freedom, Duty and the Categorical Imperative
Description
What makes an action moral: its consequences, our feelings, or the principle on which we act? In the third episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore good will, duty and the categorical imperative.
Beginning with the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), we ask what it means to act from duty, why Kant distinguishes hypothetical from categorical imperatives, and how the requirement to treat humanity as an end connects freedom with dignity. Rousseau's influence opens a discussion of social pressure, the purity of the will and universal law.
We also test Kant's ethics against difficult cases: lying, competing obligations and the limits of formal rules. The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) then brings us to autonomy, the kingdom of ends, the moral law, and the postulates of freedom, immortality and God.
This concludes the main three-part Kant series. The closing preview looks ahead to a members' bonus on The Metaphysics of Morals and Perpetual Peace.
Hosted by Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson.
Explore Beyond the Text and the Reading Club: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
The Intellectual Historian: https://theintellectualhistorian.com
READING
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Sections I-III. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5682
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Preface, Analytic and Conclusion. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5683
Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought (original German edition, 1918).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).
CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome back to Kant
00:45 Good will and the foundations of morality
01:54 Nature, necessity and the moral will
04:06 Duty, inclination and moral worth
05:40 The categorical imperative and humanity as an end
07:42 Rousseau and the purity of the will
09:06 Universal law and the test of a maxim
11:02 Objections, lying and moral dilemmas
13:52 Autonomy and the kingdom of ends
18:04 Practical reason, freedom and hope
19:19 The moral law within
21:08 Subjectivity and the limits of natural explanation
24:21 The bonus episode and closing reflections