Immanuel Kant as a Philosopher of Freedom

Last week, I met with the MVHS students to discuss Section 2 of The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. We looked at the way Kant derived a “categorical imperative” from the idea that morality commands us categorically rather than hypothetically. For instance, morality says “do not murder,” not “if you don’t want to go to jail, do not murder.” […]

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A Good Will

One of the new readings we are doing for this year’s Ethics and Economics Challenge course is Immanuel Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Last week, I spoke with the students about the first part of this essay, and we discussed Kant’s conception of morality based on the good will. Kant says a good will is the only unconditionally […]

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