Kant's Ethical Foundations Of Life

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Under Kant’s ethical foundations, there are many distinctions that are established; the main one being the empirical and “pure” sides of life. The empirical side is one based off of one’s personal experiences while the pure side is prior to experience. Kant’s focus is primarily on the “pure” side and not the empirical because the empirical side is filled with distractions that get in the way of the universal. The universal is what matters most, not the individual. The death penalty has been a controversial issue for many years. It can be divided into two maxims: an empirical and a pure. The empirical maxim would be that although the act of killing is wrong, if somebody commits a crime or an act that is a threat to society, that person deserves …show more content…
Kant believes that it is always the will that governs the action, not the consequences. In this case, the will could be either to hurt the “killer” just like the family was hurt by that individual or to protect the community by killing the individual responsible for causing death. In the scenario where the family is acting empirically, the family is being governed by the will to hurt the killer, not by the fact that they would be taking a human life. If the family were to be governed by the consequences, maybe they would not want to go through with this because they would live their lives knowing that they were responsible for taking a human life. The goal is not what matters, just the principle. In this case, the principle is the killing of another human being because of their actions, which is not pure or an act of goodwill. Kant defines responsibility as the need to act out of respect of the law, which resonates with the moral side and not the empirical. Using this, it is not morally responsible to kill another being because of the actions the individual has committed. Kant bases his beliefs around morality, consequently the pure maxim would be the one that should be willed into universal law. Kant argues that every rational being can legislate universal law after removing all the empirical. In the scenario mentioned above, if the family was not feeling anything empirical, they would not want to end the life of another human being because of their loss. They would acknowledge that they have endured a painful loss, and that the one responsible should be punished. But because they are hurting and upset, they lose sight of moral law and fall into their inclinations, which could potentially be to try to implement the death penalty on the

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