Immanuel Kant is a German philosopher of the 18th century, whose works revolutionized the then existing theory of knowledge and law, ethics and aesthetics, as well as ideas about man. The central concept of his philosophical ethical theory is the categorical imperative.
It is revealed in his fundamental philosophical work "Critique of Practical Reason". Kant criticizes morality, which is based on utilitarian interests and the laws of nature, the pursuit of personal well-being and pleasure, instincts and various feelings. He considered such morality to be false, because a person who has mastered a trade to perfection and prospers due to this may, nevertheless, be absolutely immoral.
Kant's categorical imperative (from the Latin "imperativus" - imperative) is a will that desires good for the sake of good itself, and not for the sake of something else, and has a goal in itself. Kant proclaims that a person should act in such a way that his act could become the rule for all mankind. Only a firmly realized moral duty to one's own conscience makes one behave morally. All temporary andprivate needs and interests. The categorical imperative differs from natural law in that it is not an external, but an internal coercion, “free self-coercion.”
If external duty is the observance of the laws of the state and obedience to the laws of nature, then only “internal legislation” matters for the ethical.
Kant's ethical imperative is categorical, uncompromising and absolute. Moral duty must be followed constantly, always and everywhere, regardless of circumstances. The moral law for Kant should not be conditioned by any external purpose. If the former pragmatic ethics was oriented towards the result, towards the benefit that this or that action will bring, then Kant calls for a complete rejection of the result. On the other hand, the philosopher requires a strict way of thinking and excludes any reconciliation of good and evil or any intermediate forms between them: neither in characters nor in actions can there be duality, the border between virtue and vice must be clear, definite, stable.
Morality in Kant is connected with the idea of the divine, and his categorical imperative is close in meaning to the ideals of faith: a society in which morality dominates sensual life is the highest, from the point of view of religion, stage of human development. Kant gives this ideal empirically illustrative forms. In his reflections on ethics, as well as on the state structure, he develops the idea of eternalpeace”, which is based on the economic inexpediency of war and its legal prohibition.
Georg Hegel, a German philosopher of the 19th century, severely criticized the categorical imperative, seeing its weakness in the fact that in fact it is devoid of any content: duty must be performed for the sake of duty, and what this duty consists of is unknown. In the Kantian system, it is impossible to concretize and define it somehow.
