That is excellent! For me, where the proverbial rubber hits the road, it ended up having me think about why MY actions are right or wrong. There's a great response by Chesterton, when someone pointed out a Christian and said: "look at him, not a good guy" -- he said: "just imagine how much worse he'd have been if he wasn't a Christian" It's like that for me with teaching and studying Ethics -- I'm not particularly good, but i'd be even worse without it!
Amen. The lights came on for me with Aristotle and Aquinas and it seems much of philosophy has been an effort to turn them off. Your videos are a wonderful resource. Many thanks for these many gifts to the world.
Yes, they are doing something a bit similar, trying to work out the underlying invariate structures. And, in certain ways they're both doing a kind of reductive project But, I'd hesitate to compare Chomsky with Kant on the basis of depth of thought.
Well, it's because in the way in which they order various goods, those involved in education rank lower for those people than other things, like getting the degree . . . usually because they want the degree for some other good, like making money. You're right -- the person they're actually cheating the most is themselves.
Not really. You've already got an inclination to eating built into your being, by virtue of having the kind of body you did. Now, if you were no longer inclined to eat, and thus keep yourself alive, you would then have a duty to each, I suppose, but it would really flow from the duty to maintain your own life, even against inclination
I am wrapping a class in Ethics and we have touched on so much. We studied JJ Thomson, Don Marquis, Bernard Meyer, Sissela Bok, Glaucon and Psyc. Egoism, Cultural Relativism, Utilitarianism, and now Deontology. which I find fascinating. I found your lecture to help support the material and clarify some points from my previous face to face class lectures.
That's good stuff. I'm been watching your videos as a means of revision for my ethics exams and that shit is so accurate and thorough I don't have to look elsewhere.
Yes -- along with that mindset would go this as well: any good that has been achieved, is after all a good. Even if it is not enough, if seems to pale in comparison to other goods, if it is not shared with everyone -- it is still a good
Hahaha! I was almost tempted to say that you can plow away all you like in the fields of Kant, but the soil may still remain sterile -- but then I thought of all the great idealists who drew on his thought -- Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, etc. If you liked these or found these Spring 2012 Ethics vids useful, you might take a look at the other Kant vids, covering the same text, but hitting on different points or angles, in my Fall 2011 Ethics and Intro sequences.
Plowing away is a good metaphor. The Groundwork/ethical stuff is I find useful to get a better understanding, at the moment I have watched lecture 1 and 3, hoping to watch the last tomorrow.
Yes, the same material gets presented with different emphases to different audiences and in different contexts. It is a difference in emphasis though, rather than a substantive one. Kant does think that the imperatives that matter -- morally -- are only categorical imperatives of morality, rather than hypothetical imperatives that have to do with our happiness. As a person, Kant was apparently -- for the most part -- quite a fun guy to interact with. For the most part, though. . .
Excellent vid, professor. This actually helped me with an ethics essay that I'm doing on Kant's Duty Ethics. You actually explained it more clearly than my own professor. Cheers - hope you post more lectures.
The first thing I thought of about the plagerism question (and even in terms of whether someone is being graded or not) is that the person being cheated most is the one who is doing it. They have deprived themselves of the experience and lessons that come from completing the assignment on their own. That's what baffles me most about someone using one of those services where someone writes a paper for them. Why even take the class? Why pretend to have earned a degree?
This is cool cause it seems like these kinds of approaches (and the Core Concepts videos) will probably be what drive philosophy studies in the future. It's a great format too.
A comparison was made of the work of Norm Chomsky and that of Immanuel Kant by Bryan Magee a noted broadcaster and author here in England. He said Chomsky was redoing modern linguistics just like what Kant was doing in his time with linguistics. Do you also see something similar in both of their works again thanks for the great work it has real opened my mind to a lot of great minds in philosophy.
That's great -- how, if you don't mind my asking, does the Groundwork/ethical stuff help you with making sense out of the Prolegomena/theoretical stuff? I do have to say one other thing, too, which could be encouraging -- in my view, the Groundwork and the Prolegomena, i.e. Kant's preliminary works -- are tougher to tackle than the works they're preceding, let alone the other works of Kant. So, keep plowing away at it!
I also watched your lectures on Kant for your Into to philosophy and I thought it a little odd how you portray Kant there as opposed to here. When watching that one I got the sense that Kant was saying that the ONLY imperative that was important was that of duty. Here you say that Kant isn't saying that we can't be happy, but there you say that Kant says that happiness is irrelevant. Your opener here made me go, "huh?" But I'm glad to see that he wasn't a crabby old German man :)
I really find your videos helpful. Thank you for posting them. I wish you could be my professor. I was wondering if you can explain or at least give me an idea of the quote by Kant means? "The light dove, cutting through the air in free flight and feeling its resistance, might imagine that her flight would be far easier in empty space. In this way Plato abandoned the world. of the senses because of the restrictions it places on the understanding and took flight on the wings of ideas, soaring beyond perceptible world and into the empty space of pure intellect" How did Plato abandoned the world? Is he talking about the senses?
Yes, that's it, more or less. Plato ends up abandoning the sensible to try to find knowledge in the purely rational, where for Kant, you're not going to find knowledge, for the most part. Kant was not a particularly good metaphor-maker
How much do you read per day? I always wonder how much profesor read? It's so hard to concentrate sometimes, especially when the books and concepts are hard. Thank you for videos.
Deja entendu. I just realised that this was one of the first of your lectures that I listened to. I would like to ask: Do you feel that Existentialist philosophy, by contrast, tends to stand in opposition to the notion of Guilt as an ethical imperative? I would IMAGINE that Sartre would call it Bad Faith, Nietzsche a manifestation of the Bad Conscience, De Beauvoir as something ridiculous [as an absolute] in the face of the Ethic of Ambiguity, and Camus would probably have said it was Absurd. [But I am thinking of Mersault.] What is your take on it? Dm.A.A.
Well, not sure what this has to do with Kant, since guilt is not the central way in which we experience what he takes to be the dictates of morality. One has to be careful in generalizing about Existentialist philosophy -- and notice here that you're sticking very much to the atheist ones. Guilt could play into Sartrian bad faith, or it might be precisely what authenticity does demand of a person -- otherwise a person could never feel guilt over being shown they are in bad faith! Nietzsche, yes, does not see it as good, but it can precede (and therefore need not be a manifestation of) bad conscience, historically.
I have heard Joseph Campbell define a distinction betwixt "Shame" and "Guilt". By his definition, "guilt over being shown they are in bad faith" would be Shame: Something springing from the Inner, not imposed by Power from without. And I did notice that, all though I do not draw so divisive a line between them as Marcel does. Nietzsche seems ironically at times to be the most religious of all of the existentialists (in Spirit, paradoxically). I all so tend to think of Kierkegaard's Ethical stage as one riddled with Guilt, but that Guilt would be a barrier to the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. At least from my experience, but then my own perfectionism has manifested nearly pathological guilt so maybe that is why I should feel strong aversion to Guilt. Watts all so had a brilliantly direct argument against Guilt as a "useless emotion". Sorry for coming on like a debater about this; force of habit.
Yes, there's quite a few people who want to distinguish between shame and guilt along such lines. I think that there has been a lot of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" with respect to guilt, particularly by people in Watt's generation -- to my mind, that's because they had plenty of guilt, and tended to overreact against it. Sometimes guilt can be the right affect to have -- but not always, and perhaps not even all that often
Hah. The baby and the bath-water was actually a metaphor that Watts used. Were you ever fond of his philosophy? He was perhaps the most influential philosopher in my life -- like an Obi-Wan Kenobi for me -- but I have found that Academia seems to scorn him, with the exception of some of the more brilliant professors who knew what he was all about and did not simply seem him as a member of "his generation", which he criticised subtly and all ways stood slightly but significantly apart from.
Leading up to 45:00 the concept "overcharging" is introduced. I think this is a malformed concept: over *what*? The "fair" value? By which procedure can a merchant compute the fair value of an item? If he needs to look at other merchants offering similar goods, then I think the argument is circular: how did they know what the fair price was in the first place? And also: how can the first merchant find out whether the prices offered by the other merchants is fair? Also: let's say that a procedure yields some number; why not twice that number, or half? Why is that number the *only* fair value (or the maximal fair value)? And by what definition of fair?
Well, you can think it's a "malformed" concept, if you like. You're rather missing the point. It's an example, in a classic work of Kant's. Nobody else -- and the work has been out for a few hundred years -- seems to have gotten quite so worked up about him using that example I suggest you shoot a video about your objections, upload it, and post it
Gregory B. Sadler I don't think I'm missing the point---thanks for some great teaching :)---I'm just focusing on something besides the main point of your lecture: that this particular example is not well-defined. Anyways, you suggest I upload a video; if I do, will you *then* address the substance of my questions? If not, why do you make that suggestion?
I suggest it because your objection really has nothing to do with the subject matter as such, which is Kant's Groundwork and the moral theory he articulates. You'd have this problem apparently with anyone who uses the term "fair price" or "overcharging". Will I address your worries about the very notion of price? Probably not. But others undoubtedly will.
I agree, I will challenge everyone who puts forth the notion of a *fair* price. To set the record straight, that is distinct from price as such, a concept with which I don't have a problem (definition: the proportional amount in which one good or service is traded for another). I think it is relevant to Kant's moral theory, though: I posit that if it is impossible to know what a particular maxim means, it is impossible to determine whether a particular action is in accordance with or contrary to that maxim; therefor it is impossible to know how to live by it, and thus it makes no sense to include it in a moral code. In particular, if fair price is not defined it is not possible to know whether a given exchange is on the good or bad side of duty. Also, as long as it is not defined it cannot refer to any concrete actions, which makes me wonder why it is useful as an example: one might as well state that actions should satisfy some indefinite property P, and then say that if an action satisfies P it is in accordance with duty---wouldn't that illustrate just as much?
Jonas Kölker I find it an interesting concept. As I see it market determines the price HOWEVER pricing becomes immoral the moment life and health is held hostage, such as when a single entity holds a complete monopoly over some life sustaining product or service.
Was Kant an atheist? Kant was certainly a rationalist. It seems he preferred a way to "God" exclusively emphasizing "man the measure of all things." Kant was a humanist who sought the best way of Man to God. He never addressed the problem or solution of revealed religion. At the last, he came to an understanding that Man cannot understand or measure the creator (first cause). Rationalism could only go so far. So, Kant reintroduces the problem of metaphysics, the nature of first principles and the problems of ultimate reality. His solution seems an affirmation of what Wittgenstein would later call "god talk." Nietzsche shamed Kant for "giving in." So, was Kant an atheist, agnostic, Christian or proto-buddhist?
Pretty realistic -- it happens all the time. But, not everyone will act out of that. Kant himself is fairly pessimistic about whether you can TELL whether an act is out of duty or not. But, that has little to do with whether it IS out of duty or not. Of course, for Kantian ethics, it doesn't make any difference whether it's "realistic" or not. That's not a goal or value for that tradition of ethics
I disagree. I know that is the normal interpretation. In fact, Kant claims that reverence is the emotional experience that motivates us to respect duty in the first place.
Well, I don't know what you mean by "instigating" here. I can say this - the affect involved in respect for duty/law still involves reference to that as the sole motive. The fact that there's one non-pathological (in the sense Kant uses that term) affect does not mean that duty is not still the sole motivation for genuinely moral action or choice. So, you pointing it out really provides nothing against the standard reading
Instigate is a more precise word used in empirical psychology. A less precise word used in philosophy is: motivate. The common conception that nothing motivates Kant's moral framework for duty.
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I listen to your lectures every day while walking to work, washing up dishes, cleaning, cooking. It makes chores more bearable! :D Thank you!
So. . . it makes duties easier to follow
I'm glad to read it. Sometimes hitting the same material but from different angles helps solidify the ideas on one's mind, so to speak
You're welcome! Glad you watched your way through what's almost 2 hours of class
Glad it was helpful. Yes, we keep them rolling out -- anywhere from 3-5 per week on average
That is excellent! For me, where the proverbial rubber hits the road, it ended up having me think about why MY actions are right or wrong.
There's a great response by Chesterton, when someone pointed out a Christian and said: "look at him, not a good guy" -- he said: "just imagine how much worse he'd have been if he wasn't a Christian"
It's like that for me with teaching and studying Ethics -- I'm not particularly good, but i'd be even worse without it!
Amen. The lights came on for me with Aristotle and Aquinas and it seems much of philosophy has been an effort to turn them off. Your videos are a wonderful resource. Many thanks for these many gifts to the world.
@@tommore3263 Aristotle and Aquinas are just a tiny bit of the great philosophy out there.
Yes, they are doing something a bit similar, trying to work out the underlying invariate structures. And, in certain ways they're both doing a kind of reductive project
But, I'd hesitate to compare Chomsky with Kant on the basis of depth of thought.
Thank you again Professor. I gain so much more from your classes. I do appreciate all that you do
You're very welcome!
Great! You're very welcome. Kant is a tough one to read, that's for certain.
I have a super difficult prof this summer semester and your videos have helped a bunch. I appreciate it!
Ethics is a great subject. It has made me think critically in terms of why actions are right and wrong.
Im in an online philosophy course with no lecture involved. I use your lectures and it is very helpful...thank you
You're welcome!
Shivaprakash from India
Dr Sadler, these lectures are helping me a lot in preparing for my Ethics paper. keep posting.
Glad the lectures are helpful for you. You can find a Kant playlist which has a number of videos, in my channel
Accessing the same :-)
Well, it's because in the way in which they order various goods, those involved in education rank lower for those people than other things, like getting the degree . . . usually because they want the degree for some other good, like making money.
You're right -- the person they're actually cheating the most is themselves.
Not really. You've already got an inclination to eating built into your being, by virtue of having the kind of body you did. Now, if you were no longer inclined to eat, and thus keep yourself alive, you would then have a duty to each, I suppose, but it would really flow from the duty to maintain your own life, even against inclination
You should do a series on Arthur Schopenhauer -
Love this channel btw, it's one of the best philosophy channels on RUclips.
ruclips.net/video/vkXKtxleGA8/видео.html
I am wrapping a class in Ethics and we have touched on so much. We studied JJ Thomson, Don Marquis, Bernard Meyer, Sissela Bok, Glaucon and Psyc. Egoism, Cultural Relativism, Utilitarianism, and now Deontology. which I find fascinating. I found your lecture to help support the material and clarify some points from my previous face to face class lectures.
That's good stuff. I'm been watching your videos as a means of revision for my ethics exams and that shit is so accurate and thorough I don't have to look elsewhere.
Glad you're finding them useful. Quite a testimonial. . .
Yes -- along with that mindset would go this as well: any good that has been achieved, is after all a good. Even if it is not enough, if seems to pale in comparison to other goods, if it is not shared with everyone -- it is still a good
Hahaha! I was almost tempted to say that you can plow away all you like in the fields of Kant, but the soil may still remain sterile -- but then I thought of all the great idealists who drew on his thought -- Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, etc.
If you liked these or found these Spring 2012 Ethics vids useful, you might take a look at the other Kant vids, covering the same text, but hitting on different points or angles, in my Fall 2011 Ethics and Intro sequences.
Thanks! I'm glad it's been useful for you
Plowing away is a good metaphor. The Groundwork/ethical stuff is I find useful to get a better understanding, at the moment I have watched lecture 1 and 3, hoping to watch the last tomorrow.
Yes, the same material gets presented with different emphases to different audiences and in different contexts.
It is a difference in emphasis though, rather than a substantive one. Kant does think that the imperatives that matter -- morally -- are only categorical imperatives of morality, rather than hypothetical imperatives that have to do with our happiness.
As a person, Kant was apparently -- for the most part -- quite a fun guy to interact with. For the most part, though. . .
Thank you so much for posting these!
Scott Vogeli You're very welcome!
Excellent vid, professor. This actually helped me with an ethics essay that I'm doing on Kant's Duty Ethics. You actually explained it more clearly than my own professor. Cheers - hope you post more lectures.
In the process of reading Kants Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics so your lectures are very useful
The first thing I thought of about the plagerism question (and even in terms of whether someone is being graded or not) is that the person being cheated most is the one who is doing it. They have deprived themselves of the experience and lessons that come from completing the assignment on their own. That's what baffles me most about someone using one of those services where someone writes a paper for them. Why even take the class? Why pretend to have earned a degree?
This is cool cause it seems like these kinds of approaches (and the Core Concepts videos) will probably be what drive philosophy studies in the future. It's a great format too.
Well, I think there will always be some scope for the traditional stuff - but yes, the videos can be quite useful
A comparison was made of the work of Norm Chomsky and that of Immanuel Kant by Bryan Magee a noted broadcaster and author here in England. He said Chomsky was redoing modern linguistics just like what Kant was doing in his time with linguistics. Do you also see something similar in both of their works again thanks for the great work it has real opened my mind to a lot of great minds in philosophy.
That's great -- how, if you don't mind my asking, does the Groundwork/ethical stuff help you with making sense out of the Prolegomena/theoretical stuff?
I do have to say one other thing, too, which could be encouraging -- in my view, the Groundwork and the Prolegomena, i.e. Kant's preliminary works -- are tougher to tackle than the works they're preceding, let alone the other works of Kant. So, keep plowing away at it!
I also watched your lectures on Kant for your Into to philosophy and I thought it a little odd how you portray Kant there as opposed to here. When watching that one I got the sense that Kant was saying that the ONLY imperative that was important was that of duty. Here you say that Kant isn't saying that we can't be happy, but there you say that Kant says that happiness is irrelevant. Your opener here made me go, "huh?" But I'm glad to see that he wasn't a crabby old German man :)
15:00 love, compassion, empathy, courage...
ok thank you for your time.
You're welcome
whats your opinion about Leonard Peikoffs and Ayn Rands interpretation of Kant?
Both of them are pretty awful when it comes to takes on other philosophers
Thanks very much!
Would eating be a duty since humans or animals don't really have an option but to eat in order to survive?
Thanks!
I really find your videos helpful. Thank you for posting them. I wish you could be my professor. I was wondering if you can explain or at least give me an idea of the quote by Kant means? "The light dove, cutting through the air in free flight and feeling its resistance, might imagine that her flight would be far easier in empty space. In this way Plato abandoned the world. of the senses because of the restrictions it places on the understanding and took flight on the wings of ideas, soaring beyond perceptible world and into the empty space of pure intellect" How did Plato abandoned the world? Is he talking about the senses?
Yes, that's it, more or less. Plato ends up abandoning the sensible to try to find knowledge in the purely rational, where for Kant, you're not going to find knowledge, for the most part. Kant was not a particularly good metaphor-maker
Gregory B. Sadler
Thank you so much, Dr. Sadler. Didn't think Philosophy was going to be this abstract!
How much do you read per day? I always wonder how much profesor read? It's so hard to concentrate sometimes, especially when the books and concepts are hard. Thank you for videos.
Some days, very little. Some days a few hours. It's less about what I do now, and more about what I read in the past
@@GregoryBSadler Yeah well, you are an inspiration. Thank you for all your work.
@@deanbosnjak6604 You're welcome!
Deja entendu. I just realised that this was one of the first of your lectures that I listened to.
I would like to ask: Do you feel that Existentialist philosophy, by contrast, tends to stand in opposition to the notion of Guilt as an ethical imperative? I would IMAGINE that Sartre would call it Bad Faith, Nietzsche a manifestation of the Bad Conscience, De Beauvoir as something ridiculous [as an absolute] in the face of the Ethic of Ambiguity, and Camus would probably have said it was Absurd. [But I am thinking of Mersault.]
What is your take on it?
Dm.A.A.
Well, not sure what this has to do with Kant, since guilt is not the central way in which we experience what he takes to be the dictates of morality.
One has to be careful in generalizing about Existentialist philosophy -- and notice here that you're sticking very much to the atheist ones. Guilt could play into Sartrian bad faith, or it might be precisely what authenticity does demand of a person -- otherwise a person could never feel guilt over being shown they are in bad faith!
Nietzsche, yes, does not see it as good, but it can precede (and therefore need not be a manifestation of) bad conscience, historically.
I have heard Joseph Campbell define a distinction betwixt "Shame" and "Guilt". By his definition, "guilt over being shown they are in bad faith" would be Shame: Something springing from the Inner, not imposed by Power from without. And I did notice that, all though I do not draw so divisive a line between them as Marcel does. Nietzsche seems ironically at times to be the most religious of all of the existentialists (in Spirit, paradoxically). I all so tend to think of Kierkegaard's Ethical stage as one riddled with Guilt, but that Guilt would be a barrier to the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. At least from my experience, but then my own perfectionism has manifested nearly pathological guilt so maybe that is why I should feel strong aversion to Guilt. Watts all so had a brilliantly direct argument against Guilt as a "useless emotion". Sorry for coming on like a debater about this; force of habit.
Yes, there's quite a few people who want to distinguish between shame and guilt along such lines.
I think that there has been a lot of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" with respect to guilt, particularly by people in Watt's generation -- to my mind, that's because they had plenty of guilt, and tended to overreact against it. Sometimes guilt can be the right affect to have -- but not always, and perhaps not even all that often
Hah. The baby and the bath-water was actually a metaphor that Watts used. Were you ever fond of his philosophy? He was perhaps the most influential philosopher in my life -- like an Obi-Wan Kenobi for me -- but I have found that Academia seems to scorn him, with the exception of some of the more brilliant professors who knew what he was all about and did not simply seem him as a member of "his generation", which he criticised subtly and all ways stood slightly but significantly apart from.
All so: Jung criticised Guilt.
Thanks I will have a look at those vids as well.
Leading up to 45:00 the concept "overcharging" is introduced. I think this is a malformed concept: over *what*? The "fair" value? By which procedure can a merchant compute the fair value of an item? If he needs to look at other merchants offering similar goods, then I think the argument is circular: how did they know what the fair price was in the first place? And also: how can the first merchant find out whether the prices offered by the other merchants is fair? Also: let's say that a procedure yields some number; why not twice that number, or half? Why is that number the *only* fair value (or the maximal fair value)? And by what definition of fair?
Well, you can think it's a "malformed" concept, if you like. You're rather missing the point. It's an example, in a classic work of Kant's. Nobody else -- and the work has been out for a few hundred years -- seems to have gotten quite so worked up about him using that example
I suggest you shoot a video about your objections, upload it, and post it
Gregory B. Sadler I don't think I'm missing the point---thanks for some great teaching :)---I'm just focusing on something besides the main point of your lecture: that this particular example is not well-defined. Anyways, you suggest I upload a video; if I do, will you *then* address the substance of my questions? If not, why do you make that suggestion?
I suggest it because your objection really has nothing to do with the subject matter as such, which is Kant's Groundwork and the moral theory he articulates. You'd have this problem apparently with anyone who uses the term "fair price" or "overcharging".
Will I address your worries about the very notion of price? Probably not. But others undoubtedly will.
I agree, I will challenge everyone who puts forth the notion of a *fair* price. To set the record straight, that is distinct from price as such, a concept with which I don't have a problem (definition: the proportional amount in which one good or service is traded for another).
I think it is relevant to Kant's moral theory, though: I posit that if it is impossible to know what a particular maxim means, it is impossible to determine whether a particular action is in accordance with or contrary to that maxim; therefor it is impossible to know how to live by it, and thus it makes no sense to include it in a moral code.
In particular, if fair price is not defined it is not possible to know whether a given exchange is on the good or bad side of duty. Also, as long as it is not defined it cannot refer to any concrete actions, which makes me wonder why it is useful as an example: one might as well state that actions should satisfy some indefinite property P, and then say that if an action satisfies P it is in accordance with duty---wouldn't that illustrate just as much?
Jonas Kölker I find it an interesting concept. As I see it market determines the price HOWEVER pricing becomes immoral the moment life and health is held hostage, such as when a single entity holds a complete monopoly over some life sustaining product or service.
Another great lecture
is goodwill related to performing duty with spirit??
Very helpful thank you very much my friend.
I have a question about your duties what if you lie about how you feel specifically fake it till you make it
It would likely depend on how you're framing the action
Is there a reason that you Kant playlist starts with this video? Thanks! Peter.
I start most of my playlists with longer videos
Hahahah! far from 1 second! This is the longest one I've done so far
Was Kant an atheist? Kant was certainly a rationalist. It seems he preferred a way to "God" exclusively emphasizing "man the measure of all things." Kant was a humanist who sought the best way of Man to God. He never addressed the problem or solution of revealed religion. At the last, he came to an understanding that Man cannot understand or measure the creator (first cause). Rationalism could only go so far. So, Kant reintroduces the problem of metaphysics, the nature of first principles and the problems of ultimate reality. His solution seems an affirmation of what Wittgenstein would later call "god talk." Nietzsche shamed Kant for "giving in." So, was Kant an atheist, agnostic, Christian or proto-buddhist?
"Was Kant an atheist?" No
how realistic is to assume people will act out of sense of moral duty?
Pretty realistic -- it happens all the time. But, not everyone will act out of that.
Kant himself is fairly pessimistic about whether you can TELL whether an act is out of duty or not. But, that has little to do with whether it IS out of duty or not.
Of course, for Kantian ethics, it doesn't make any difference whether it's "realistic" or not. That's not a goal or value for that tradition of ethics
why not? is it because people are selfish or society just don't care about being mortal. is this a significant flaw in kants system?
Why not what?
this shit is dope!
Glad you found it useful for you -- or should "dope" be taken to mean "entertaining", instead?
I disagree. I know that is the normal interpretation. In fact, Kant claims that reverence is the emotional experience that motivates us to respect duty in the first place.
Mark X He says something like that in the actual Metaphysics of Morals -- like that, but not precisely that.
If Kant does state that, then what do you make of the common conception that there is nothing instigating his moral framework?
Well, I don't know what you mean by "instigating" here.
I can say this - the affect involved in respect for duty/law still involves reference to that as the sole motive. The fact that there's one non-pathological (in the sense Kant uses that term) affect does not mean that duty is not still the sole motivation for genuinely moral action or choice.
So, you pointing it out really provides nothing against the standard reading
Instigate is a more precise word used in empirical psychology. A less precise word used in philosophy is: motivate. The common conception that nothing motivates Kant's moral framework for duty.
Okay. I don't think that will be particularly useful in studying this material. Good luck with the studies
Thanks!