The Categorical Imperative
The categorical imperative is the centerpiece of the Groundwork. Although it may seem superficially similar to the Golden Rule, it is in no way equivalent. The Golden Rule demands that one's actions conform to one's own standard, whereas Kant's moral imperative places the standard for moral good in reason (directly contradicting Hume, who claimed reason could not be a ground for moral choices). He states that people should always be treated with respect to their personhood and dignity, and always as ends in themselves: they can be treated as a means and an end at the same time, but never only as a means.
Consider the example of the liar. The Golden Rule allows that lying to others may be acceptable under some conditions, but the categorical imperative determines lying immoral without exception. This could be considered to be a flaw in the Golden Rule, one that is corrected by insisting, as Kant does, that actions must be universal to be moral and by insisting that morality cannot be merely a matter of preference or taste.
Kant expanded and elucidated these ideas further in some of his later works, primarily the Critique of Practical Reason (1788, informally referred to as his Second Critique), Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Read more about this topic: Groundwork Of The Metaphysic Of Morals
Famous quotes containing the words categorical and/or imperative:
“We do the same thing to parents that we do to children. We insist that they are some kind of categorical abstraction because they produced a child. They were people before that, and they’re still people in all other areas of their lives. But when it comes to the state of parenthood they are abruptly heir to a whole collection of virtues and feelings that are assigned to them with a fine arbitrary disregard for individuality.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)