From our discussions in class, I agree with Kant's philosophy that there are a universal set of laws that apply to everyone no matter the circumstances. It was brought up that this could not be because certain circumstances permitted certain actions i.e. a soldier killing an enemy. My rebuttal to this is based on somewhat on an infinite regress; if in fact there were a universal set of moral laws, in the case of the soldier killing the enemy, the enemy would probably not be an enemy if he or she had not already broken one of these moral laws. Though this leads to a lot of finger pointing and leads back to an endless trail of moral law breaking, I believe that at the beginning of civilization there was a set of moral guidelines that were common among people, whether we were born with them or they were developed is for another debate. The first time these moral laws were broken, a never ending chain of immorality was triggered which continues on today. So, the soldier would not have to kill the enemy if the enemy had not already been morally corrupted.
Kant also proposes a correlation between a good will and "duty"; to understand duty is essential to obtain a good will. I understand one's "duty" is like his or her ergon. Kant writes that these duties differ from individual to individual. With that in mind, what keeps a person's duty from being a bad duty? With this bad duty, would that person's definition of a good will actually be a bad will?
I like your example at the beginning where you referred to the soldier and the enemy. It is a good perspective and I can clearly see where you're coming from. When referring to duty I understand why you asked the question regarding bad duty. Kant has his 3 proposition of duties that he gives us. In his first proposition he tells us that a human action is morally good only because it is done for the sake of duty. The second proposition is that the moral worth of an action is based from the formal principle of Maxim, which is the principle of doing ones duty whatever that duty may be. Kant would answer this question by saying that depending on the action, the duty is only a rational one. The principle of Maxim tells us that a person must do a duty no matter what it is, but this principle is broken into 2 other principles regarding the subjective and objective principles regarding duty. The objective principles allows us to strain out the bad duties from the morally good ones by determining whether the person is acting rationally.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your piece of work that you have created here on this page especially with the sense that you used a form of pros and cons instead of just agreeing with one side or the other. To answer your question, no a bad duty does not make a person always have a bad will. A duty is very individualized though the causes add to what makes them individual. The causes could be out of laziness, being level headed, or simply disobedient. Though they have a bad duty they do not have intentions of using bad will.
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