Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn.
Guests
-
Alison Hills No other episodes
Professor of Philosophy at St John's College, Oxford -
David Oderberg No other episodes
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading - John Callanan
3 episodes
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King's College, London
Reading list
-
Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader's Guide
P. Guyer (Continuum, 2007) Google Books → -
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant (trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmerman) (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Creating the Kingdom of Ends
Christine Korsgaard (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Google Books → -
Kant: A Very Short Introduction
Roger Scruton (Oxford University Press, 2001) Google Books → -
Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: An Introduction
Sally Sedgwick (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Google Books → -
An Introduction to Kant's Ethics
Roger J. Sullivan (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Google Books → -
Kant
Allen W. Wood (Blackwell, 2005) Google Books → -
Kant's Ethical Thought
Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
3 Jun, 2021 100 Philosophy -
Guilt
1 Nov, 2007 170 Ethics -
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality
12 Jan, 2017 100 Philosophy -
Duty
13 Nov, 2003 170 Ethics -
Common Sense Philosophy
21 Jun, 2007 100 Philosophy -
David Hume
6 Oct, 2011 100 Philosophy -
The Social Contract
7 Feb, 2008 320 Political science -
Utilitarianism
11 Jun, 2015 100 Philosophy -
Mill
18 May, 2006 320 Political science -
Freedom
4 Jul, 2002 320 Political science
Programme ID: b0952zl3
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0952zl3
Auto-category: 170 (Ethics and moral philosophy)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello, Immanuel Kant, 1724 to 1804, was one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, an age in which reason was the dominant force in philosophy as it was in science.