Immanuel Kant 🎓 Idealism

Kant did not think that all of our desires simply spring up in us, like mushrooms in the back yard, to be approached with caution. ... Kant believed it is an important fact about human beings that our first-order desires and impulses do not all derive immediately from instinct, like those of the other animals, but rather arise from a complex interplay of instinct and reason. — Christine M. Korsgaard

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

Kant keenly sees the confusion between thought and being, and the way in which thought mistakes its own products for objective reality. He overcomes the object’s power over the subject by revealing that the [phenomenal] object is born by the [transcendental] subject. — Nikolai Berdyaev

To behold virtue in her proper form is nothing else but to contemplate morality stripped of all admixture of sensible things and of every spurious ornament of reward or self-love. How much she then eclipses everything else that appears charming to the affections…

Morality is the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Morals themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as we are without that clue and supreme norm by which to appraise them correctly.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

— Dan Zahavi

Human reason so delights in constructions that it has several times built up a tower and then razed it to examine the nature of the foundation.

By a lie, a man annihilates his dignity as a man.

Whatever the origins of our representations, whether they are due to the influence of outer things, or are produced through inner causes, whether they arise a priori, or being appearances have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself. ... [A]s reason is not competent to guide the will with certainty in regard to its objects and the satisfaction of all our wants (which it to some extent even multiplies), this being an end to which an implanted instinct would have led with much greater certainty; and since, nevertheless, reason is imparted to us as a practical faculty, i.e., as one which is to have influence on the will, therefore, admitting that nature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end, its true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary. ... It is just in this that the moral worth of the character is brought out which is incomparably the highest of all, namely, that he is beneficent, not from inclination, but from duty. ... [L]ove, as an affection, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty's sake may; even though we are not impelled to it by any inclination — nay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. This is practical love and not pathological — a love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sense — in principles of action and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love alone which can be commanded. ... [A]n action done from duty derives its moral worth not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire. ... [T]he moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects — agreeableness of one's condition and even the promotion of the happiness of others — could have been also brought about by other causes, so that for this there would have been no need of the will of a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the supreme and unconditional good can be found. The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. ... As I have deprived the will of every impulse which could arise to it from obedience to any law, there remains nothing but the universal conformity of its actions to law in general, which alone is to serve the will as a principle, i.e., I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

Duty is Kant's alpha and omega. Out of a duty to be grateful, so he maintains, we should defend and admire the ancients; and only out of a sense of duty did he become a great man. — Friedrich Schlegel

Whatever, over and above good life-conduct, man fancies that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious delusion.

One cannot expect that kings philosophize or that philosophers become kings. Nor is this desirable, for holding power unavoidably corrupts the free judgement of reason.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

The more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.