Morally speaking, Kant is a deontologist; from the Greek, this is the science of duties. For Kant, morality is not defined by the consequences of our actions, our emotions, or an external factor. Morality is defined by duties and one’s action is moral if it is an act motivated by duty. According to Kant the only thing that is good in itself is the “good will.” The will is what drives our actions and grounds the intention of our act. It is good when it acts from duty. To clarify, Kant thinks the good will is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable. If we think about the other goods and things that we value, such are not good without qualification. For example, we value knowledge, but such can be used to commit atrocities in the world, so knowledge is good sometimes. The same can be said of courage. We value courage, but a suicide bomber also exhibits courage. So, courage can only be good sometimes. We can think of other examples as well. This leads Kant to claim that the good will is the only thing good without qualification–or the only thing that is intrinsically good. Accordingly, the will is a good will provided it acts from duty. Kant recognizes that it is difficult to determine one’s intentions, so he makes a distinction between acting in conformity with duty and acting from duty. To illustrate this distinction, let’s take the example of three young men who see an elderly woman needing help across the street. Man A decides he will help the woman across the street because if he didn’t he would feel guilty all day. Man B decides he will help the woman across the street because he recognizes her as his neighbor, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson makes the best cookies in the neighborhood. So, Man B helps her because he reasons that he will be rewarded. Man C decides he will help the woman across the street because it is the right thing to do; he understands that he has a moral obligation to help others in need when he can.

1. Immanuel Kant
• Born: April 22, 1724.
• Died: February 12, 1804
• He lived his entire life in and around East Prussia (Now Kaliningrad,
Russia) – never traveled more than 50 miles from his birthplace

2. Immanuel Kant
• Immanuel Kant(April 1724 – February 1804) was a German
philosopher who is widely considered to be a central figure
of modern philosophy.
• He argued that fundamental concepts structure
human experience, and reason is the source of morality. His
thought continues to have a major influence on
contemporary thought, especially the fields of metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.

3. 4. According to Kant, humankind has a natural tendency
to metaphysics, which means human species want to design the
existence of god, the immortality of the soul, and freedom as objects
located beyond the world. Hence, man wants to reveal information
about them.
5. However, sensibility and understanding forming
human's cognition (mental process of acquiring knowledge and
understanding through thought, experience and the senses) can be
used only for the field of experience.
• Kant thinks that human’s mind creates these ideas of metaphysical
(basically) objects because of ethical reasons not for epistemic
reasons. Because, human beings want to guarantee its finite existence
with the ideas of god, the immortality of the soul, and freedom.

4. Metaphysics arises from the consciousness of man’s
finite existence and it is born from the desire to ensure this
existence. • Kant’s ideas about metaphysics can be clearly
found in his book “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781). This book
is far from an easy read: Kant himself described it as both dry
and obscure. Very few people would claim to understand it all.
Like most philosophers, he spent his time trying
to understand our relation to reality. That, in essence, is what
metaphysicians is about, and Kant was one of the greatest
metaphysicians to have lived. His particular interest was in the
limits of thought, the limits of what we can know and
understand. In his work, “Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics”, he also tried to find out the structure of reason.
It has an easy read when it is compared with Critique of Pure
Reason.

5. According to David Hume, metaphysics is the most controversial science. •
David Hume took an extreme position, arguing that all genuine knowledge
involves either mathematics (ideas of relations) or matters of fact and that
metaphysics, which goes beyond these, is worthless. He concludes his Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding with the statement:
“If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity
or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter
of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain
nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
33 years after Hume's Enquiry appeared, Immanuel Kant published his
Critique of Pure Reason. Though he followed Hume in rejecting much of
previous metaphysics, he argued that there was still room for some synthetic a
priori knowledge (a knowledge that a person can have without needing
experience to justify it), concerned with matters of fact yet obtainable
independent of experience. These included fundamental structures of space,
time, and causality.

6. Immanuel Kant
• Kant's major work, the Critique of Pure Reason aimed to explain the
relationship between reason and human experience. With this project, he
hoped to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy
and metaphysics. He attempted to put an end to what he considered an era
of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the
skepticism of thinkers such as David Hume.
• Kant plans to return metaphysics from its wrong way and wants to build
metaphysics as a “science”. • Kant thinks that this "dogmatism" should be
replaced by a critical approach.
• Like the systems builders, Kant had an overarching framework in which
all questions were to be addressed. Like Hume, who famously woke him
from his 'dogmatic slumbers', he was suspicious of metaphysical
speculation, and also places much emphasis on the limitations of the human
mind.

7. Immanuel Kant
• Kant saw rationalist philosophers as aiming for a kind of metaphysical
knowledge he defined as the synthetic a priori—that is knowledge that does
not come from the senses (it is a priori) but is nonetheless about reality
(synthetic).
• Inasmuch as it is about reality, it is unlike abstract mathematical
propositions (which he terms analytical a priori), and being a priori it is
distinct from empirical, scientific knowledge (which he terms synthetic
posterior).
• The only synthetic a priori knowledge we can have is of how our minds
organize the data of the senses; that organizing framework is space and
time, which for Kant have no mind-independent existence, but nonetheless
operate uniformly in all humans.

8. Immanuel Kant
• A priori knowledge of space and time is all that remains
of metaphysics as traditionally conceived. There is a reality beyond
sensory data or phenomena, which he calls the realm of noumena
(reality based); however, we cannot know it as it is in itself, but only
as it appears to us.
• He allows himself to speculate that the origins of God, morality,
and free will might exist in the noumenal realm, but these possibilities
have to be set against its basic unknowability for humans. Although he
saw himself as having disposed of metaphysics, in a sense, he has
generally been regarded in retrospect as having a metaphysics of his
own.

9. Immanuel Kant
• If metaphysics be a science, how does it come to the position that it could not,
like other sciences, obtain universal and permanent recognition? • If not, how can
it maintain its pretensions, and keep the human mind in suspense with hopes,
never ceasing, yet never fulfilled?
• The answer to this problem is still hidden in man’s natural tendency to
metaphysics. • In the case of metaphysics queries, Kant appeals “resources of the
mind itself” in order to enlighten contradictions faced by mind and human’s
inclination to metaphysics.
• What Is Enlightenment?
• Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. • Nonage is
the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This
nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in
indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance.

10. Immanuel Kant
• Dare to know! "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore
the motto of the enlightenment.
• Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind
gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external
guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as
guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor.
• If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a
physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself.
I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable
business for me.
• Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself/herself out of the
nonage which has become almost second nature to him. S/He has even grown to
like it, and is at first really incapable of using his/her own understanding because
s/he has never been permitted to try it.

11. Immanuel Kant
• Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed
for reasonable use--or rather abuse--of his/her natural gifts, are the
fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would
make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not
used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men
who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating
their own minds.
• It is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten
itself; indeed, if it is only given freedom, enlightenment is almost
inevitable.

12. Immanuel Kant
• A public can achieve enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may
bring about the end of a personal despotism or of tyrannical
oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New
prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guide lines for the
unthinking multitude.
• This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom--and the most
innocent of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public
use of one's reason in all matters.

13. Immanuel Kant
• Now I hear the cry from all sides: "Do not argue!" The officer says: "Do not
argue--drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue--pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue--
believe!" Only one ruler in the world says: "Argue as much as you please, but
obey!" We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is
harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances
enlightenment?
• Kant replies: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and only
this can bring enlightenment to mankind.
• On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly
restricted without especially hindering the progress of enlightenment. By "public
use of one's reason" I mean that use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before
the reading public. I call "private use" that use which a man makes of his reason in
a civic post that has been entrusted to him.

14. Immanuel Kant
• Thus it would be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders
from his/her superiors should want to criticize the appropriateness or utility
of his/her orders. S/He must obey. But as a scholar s/he could not rightfully
be prevented from taking notice of the mistakes in the military service and
from submitting his views to his/her public for its judgment.
• The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes levied upon him; indeed,
impertinent censure of such taxes could be punished as a scandal that might
cause general disobedience. Nevertheless, this man does not violate the
duties of a citizen if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the
impropriety or possible injustice of such levies.
• A man may postpone his own enlightenment, but only for a limited
period of time. And to give up enlightenment altogether, either for oneself
or one's descendants, is to violate and to trample upon the sacred rights of
man.

15. Immanuel Kant
• When we ask, Are we now living in an enlightened age? the answer is,
No, but we live in an age of enlightenment. As matters now stand it is still
far from true that men are already capable of using their own reason in
religious matters confidently and correctly without external guidance.
• Still, we have some obvious indications that the field of working toward
the goal [of religious truth] is now opened. What is more, the hindrances
against general enlightenment or the emergence from self-imposed nonage
are gradually diminishing. In this respect this is the age of the
enlightenment.
• A prince ought not to deem it beneath his dignity to state that he
considers it his duty not to dictate anything to his subjects in religious
matters, but to leave them complete freedom. If he repudiates the arrogant
word "tolerant", he is himself enlightened.

16. Immanuel Kant
• Under his reign, honorable pastors, acting as scholars and regardless of
the duties of their office, can freely and openly publish their ideas to the
world for inspection, although they deviate here and there from accepted
doctrine.
• This is even more true of every person not restrained by any oath of
office. This spirit of freedom is spreading beyond the boundaries [of
Prussia] even where it has to struggle against the external hindrances
established by a government that fails to grasp its true interest.
• Kant have emphasized the main point of the enlightenment--man's
emergence from his self-imposed nonage--primarily in religious matters,
because our rulers have no interest in playing the guardian to their subjects
in the arts and sciences.

17. Immanuel Kant
Only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of
shadows, and who commands at the same time a well disciplined and
numerous army as guarantor of public peace--only he can say what [the
sovereign of] a free state cannot dare to say: "Argue as much as you
like, and about what you like, but obey!"