Until Emmanuel Kant, God, primarily the western Religion of Christianity's concept of
God, was of an elevated stature over humans when concerning the issue of morality. This
however was to be questioned due to this philosophers works on this subject. All
philosophers preceding him also tried to solve and define this mystical thing called
moral good.
For Kant this journey had a side benefit. He discovered that it was all more impressive
to be good as a human than God itself. For a human to do the right or moral thing means
that a decision must be made; to side with the duality within each person, to be moral or
follow the animalistic nature of inclination. This inclination is the desire, primarily,
to be happy.
To be moral means adhering to codes of goodness and selflessness. This might involve
running into a burning building to rescue a child. This doesn't make one happy, because
one doesn't say, "I could die or I could live. Ya know, I think I'll take the first
option...Yippee." This seems ludicrous, that one would chose the good of one over the
good of another, and not chose yourself. But this is what elevates us above the rest of
the life on the planet, that we will chose to serve the laws of morality and justice,
while putting aside one's own happiness.
God on the other hand has no such decision to make. God only knows morality. There is
no weighing or balancing of conflicting agendas, be it morality or desire. This is what
I choose to tag "Kanflict." God's decision is all the less impressive because morality is
the only option.
For us humans it is all the more difficult and therefore impressive to choose morality
over desire to serve our own happiness. Kant has therefor shown that Plato's analogy of
the Ring Of Gygies is not the perfect life, that Hobbes was wrong when he said that the
best life was to be able to do whatever suited our desires. He has shown this to be false
with the fact that humans feel a contradiction in our own will. In other words, we feel
guilty and awful after we have chosen the less glorious, but all the more easy and
gratifying in the short term, way out called desire.
This contradiction is caused by a series of things which Kant outlines and discusses in
his discussion of the Metaphysical. A few of these components are: a priori, a posteori,
maxim, will, and law. These are simply words for the parts that make up a decision, and
it is important to understand their relation ship to the imperatives, or reasons for an
action. The three imperatives are: 1. skill, how something is carried out, 2.
Hypothetical, suggestions of what will make one happy, desires, 3. Moral, this is simply
the ought part of a decision or the conscience. The first two, when combined, are a
formula for happiness. This is not, as it is to Hobbes, the best possible life and is
second in our mind to the third imperative, moral or categorical. This is simply to say
that one knows what is the moral thing to do and must, in some cases, choose over
happiness when conflicts of interest occur chose the moral way.
How does one know what is moral? The terms before assist me with this answer. A priori
is the knowledge we have of what is good or bad, moral or immoral, that is known without
experience. For example, it is wrong to rape. A posteori is less glorious and pure, but
it has a similar effect. It is the knowledge of something from experience. The maxim is
the action which one's will considers and weighs before doing it. In other words it is
the word for the whole process discussed here. These all assist the understanding of what
is moral, called the categorical imperative. The imperative is broken down into a few
parts. Unlike the hypothetical, one knows before an action what one must do. It is
immediate. It is also an end in itself. It must be universally true and to be good one
must make it the maxim of one's action.
"The categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively
necessary in itself, without any reference to any other end."(p.1009)
Kant is trying to say that an action must be purely only done for the purpose of doing
that action, without any other motive or reason for doing it. Charity is a good example
of this. People often give to charity because it is good to help others, but they also
get to feel good and show off to their friends with little medals of plaques. This
destroys the good of the original moral reason for doing that action.
That is why it is so much more impressive to do moral acts as a human than God. For
God only has one option, only one imperative for doing an act. Whereas a human has three
kinds of imperatives. One might have 20 desires and one moral reason to do an act and
still chooses the moral way out. To be purely moral may be next to impossible, for I have
never known a purely moral act myself. But perhaps, it is possible and here lies the
potential for glory of a more impressive stature than the divine.
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