Name: John Holladay
Title: Professor of Humanities / Room C212.
Office Hours: Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11-Noon Tuesday
/ Thursday 11-Noon
Email:jholladay@mail.monroe.cc.mi.us
152 Western Philosophy Study Questions
The Categorical Imperative
Immanuel Kant
1. What in the only thing that is good without limitation? Why?
Give examples.
2. What is the true object of reason? What does Kant see as reason's role in producing happiness? How does this compare with Plato's and Aristotle's view on this subject?
3. What is the difference between doing something "in accordance with duty" and doing something "because of duty"? What can you tell about Kant's view on euthanasia?
4. What actions have genuine moral value? Compare his view on this to that of John Stuart Mill.
5. What in the only principle of the will that is entitled to be called good absolutely and without qualification? Is it acceptable to tell "little white lies"? Why or why not?
6. What in duty? What "natural dialectic" does it create?
7. Why is moral law binding on all rational beings and only on rational beings?
8. What are imperatives? Distinguish a hypothetical imperative from a categorical imperative. Give examples of each.
9. What are the imperatives of "skill" and of "prudence"?
How is each made possible?
10. Why is there only one categorical imperative that can be called necessary?
What is that imperative?
11. What makes persons objective ends and different from all other things,
which are subjective ends? What "practical imperative" follows from this?
If you wish to return to my home page click here.12. How does Kant justify his principle as being objective and not borrowed from experience?
13. What is "the kingdom of ends? How is it related to his final definition of morality?
14. Provide each of the three ways in which the principle of morality has been formulated.