Morality as categorical imperative

Abstract

This article attempts to foreground morality as categorical imperative. For Kant the categorical imperative is the fundamental principle of morality grounded on the idea of autonomy. He argues that an exclusive empirical philosophy can have nothing to say about morality, it can only urge us to be guided by our emotions or at the best by an enlightened self-love, at the very time when the abyss between unregulated impulse or undiluted self-interest and moral principles has been so tragically displace in practice. Kant believed that an action can only be morally worthy if it is performed in accordance with the categorical imperative, meaning that it is performed out of a sense of duty to the moral law. The categorical imperative must be universally applicable to all autonomous beings. And I agree with Kant that a principle which applies to all autonomous beings must be categorical imperative based on universal law. Morality, for Kant is fundamentally a matter of following the categorical imperative and such is a matter of acting from duty and not simply outwardly conforming to a rule because for Kant conformity to the moral duty is the practical necessity of a possible action as necessary of itself without reference to another end.