In the history of western philosophy Immunal Kant stands as a milestone. they begins with his Inaugural Dissertation in1770 on the difference between right and left handed spatial orientations, he patiently worked out the most comprehensive and influential philosophical programmer of the modern era. His central thesis is about to the possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active participation of the human mind, it is deceptively simple, but the details of its application are notoriously complex.
Kant held that the most interesting and useful varieties of human knowledge rely upon synthetic judgments which are, in turn, possible only when the mind determines the conditions of its own experience. Significant applications of his principles are expressed in Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature. According to Immanuel Kant the human beings have a special place in creation and that morality can be summed up in one, ultimate commandment of reason, or imperative, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain action to be necessary.
A hypothetical imperative would explain the action in a given circumstance: If I wish to satisfy my thirst, then I must drink something. A categorical imperative would denote an absolute, unconditional requirement that exerts its authority in all circumstances, both required and justified as an end in itself. Immanuel Kant expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the moral philosophy of his day because he believed it could never surpass the level of hypothetical imperatives, but this would be irrelevant to someone who is concerned only with maximizing the positive outcome for themselves..
Working of the Kant theory is divided in the steps: In this first formulation, Immanuel Kant concludes that a moral proposition that is true must be one that is not tied to any particular conditions, including the identity of the person doing the moral deliberation. He says that“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. ” According to his Second formulation, every rational action must set before itself not only a principle, but also an end.
Most ends are of a subjective nature, because they need only be pursued if they are in line with some particular hypothetical imperative that a person may choose to adopt. For an end to be objective, it would be categorically necessary that we pursue it. According to his Third formulation, Due to a truly autonomous will would not be subject to any particular interest, it would only be subject to those laws which it makes for itself. But it must also regard those laws as if they would be binding to others, or they would not be universalizable, and hence they would not be laws of conduct at all.
Thus Kant presents the notion of the hypothetical kingdom of ends of which he suggests all people should consider themselves both members and heads. According to Immanuel Kant: We ought to act only by maxims which would harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends. We have perfect duty not to act by maxims that create incoherent or impossible states of natural affairs when we attempt to universalize them, and we have imperfect duty not to act by maxims that lead to unstable or greatly undesirable states of affairs.
In Kant’s view, the nature of a moral act is one which would be the right thing to do for any person in similar circumstances. He says that the ability to take moral decisions is called the pure practical reason, in this word the pure practical means our understanding power and practical reason means how we interact with the world in our experience. Principle according to which all ends can be determined as moral and it is this fundamental principle of moral reason which is known as the categorical imperative.
Immanuel Kant also created an architectonic system in which there is a progression of phases from the most formal to the most empirical. “Kant develops his system of corporeal nature in the following way. He starts in the Critique with the most formal act of human cognition, called by him the transcendental unity of apperception, and its various aspects, called the logical functions of judgment. He then proceeds to the pure categories of the understanding, and then to the schematized categories, and finally to the transcendental principles of nature in general.
It is within this system that the transcendental schemata serve a crucial purpose. Stoicism is known as a school of helle nistic philosophy, this philosophy is founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens, it concern cosmic determination and human freedom, and the believe that virtue is to maintain a will that is in accord with nature. According to this philosophy the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good such as health happiness possessions etc. Epictetus is the Greek Stoic philosopher who emphasized freedom, morality, and humanity. He taught philosophy in Rome until he was exiled by Emperor Domitian in AD 90.
Epictetus asserted that humans are limited and irrational beings, but that the universe ruled only through pure reason and is therefore perfect. Because human beings can neither know nor control their destiny, they must cease striving for the attainment of worldly ends and calmly accept their powerlessness before fate. The heart of this philosophy is today found in rational-emotive therapy, which teaches us the ABCs, according to Epictetus: an Activating event creates a Belief over which we have some Choice. The secret is that it’s not the activating event or the choice that we can control – it’s the belief.
If we can only change how we view events, we can make ourselves bear anything. The stoics believed in the certainty of knowledge, which can be attained through the use of reason, truth can be distinguished from false belief, even if in principle only an approximation can be made. According to the Stoics, the senses are constantly receiving sensations: pulsations which pass from objects through the senses to the mind, where they leave behind an impression . The mind has the ability to approve or reject an impression, to enable it to distinguish a representation of reality which is true from one which is false.
Some impressions can be assented to immediately, but others can only achieve varying degrees of hesitant approval which can be labeled belief or opinion. According to the Stoics, the universe is a material, reasoning, substance, known as God or Nature, which the Stoics divided into two classes, the active and the passive. The passive substance is matter, which “lies sluggish, a substance ready for any use, but sure to remain unemployed if no one sets it in motion. ” The active substance, which can be called fate or Universal Reason, is a material, intelligent aether or primordial fire, which acts on the passive matter.
The universe itself is god and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is this same world’s guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality which embraces all existence; then the foreordained might and necessity of the future; then fire and the principle of aether; then those elements whose natural state is one of flux and transition, such as water, earth, and air; then the sun, the moon, the stars; and the universal existence in which all things are contained.
Everything is subject to the laws of Fate, for the Universe acts only according to its own nature, and the nature of the passive matter which it governs. The souls of people and animal are emanations from this primordial fire, and are, likewise, subject to Fate