Kant and Moral Values Essay -- Philosophy Essays Papers

Kant says that clean-living determine are wide without qualification. This assertion and similar remarks of Plato can be understood in terms of a return to moral data themselves in the following ways 1. Moral determine are objectively good and not relative to our judgments 2. Moral goodness is intrinsic goodness grounded in the nature of acts and independent of our subjective satisfaction 3. Moral goodness expresses in an fundamentally new and higher sense of the idea of value as such 4. Moral Goodness cannot be abused like intellectual, aesthetic, temperamental and other values 5. Moral values are good in that they never must be sacrificed for any other value, because they are incomparably higher and should perfectly and world-class be sought for 6. Moral goodness makes the person as such good 7. All three different modes of participation in moral values are linked to the absolute, most necessary and highest good for the person 8. Moral Values are goods in the unrestricted sen se by being clean perfections in the sense that neither in this world nor outside it can we find anything that could be called good unqualifiedly except moral goodness which is absolutely better to possess than not to possess. 9. Moral Values are unconditionally good because they are never just means towards ends. 10. Moral values think of a new type of ought which elucidates the absolute sense in which they are good. Conclusion These distinctions allow a better grasp of Kant and Plato as well as of a central ethical truth decisive for the moral education of humankind. Kant calls moral values the only values that are good without qualification, and thereby states something precise profound about morality. Let us read his great text in which he expresses ma... ...1961. S. 58-84.(8) See John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1983) see as well as the same author, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1980).(9) See on this Anselm von Canterbu ry. Monologion, ch. 15. See also Josef Seifert, Essere e persona. Verso una fondazione fenomenologica di una metafisica classica e personalistica. (Milano Vita e Pensiero, 1989), ch. 5.(10) Also in Anselm the deepest kernel of maius is a moral one. Compare my Gott als Gottesbeweis (Heidelberg Universittsverlag C. Winter, 1996), ch. 11.(11) See on this Ethics, 2nd edn (Chicago Franciscan Herald Press, 1978), ch. 17-18 Josef Seifert, Josef Seifert, Essere e persona, cit., ch. 9.(12) On a sevenfold motivation of moral acts see Josef Seifert, Was ist und was motiviert eine sittliche Handlung? (Salzburg Univ.Verlag A. Pustet, 1976).