What Is The Importance Of Immanuel Kant's Nicomachean Ethics

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher wrote a book called Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals that says you must live your life by abiding to a moral code, a duty that applies to every human being. Meaning that everything you do must align with what the rest of the universe would do in that same situation. That you would never be able to be rewarded for anything you do, but that what you do is to be done out of the pure goodness in your heart. That “it is not necessary that whilst [you] live [you] live happily, but it is necessary that so long as [you] live [you] should live honourably” (Kant). Are you on board to start living this type of life? Alternatively, Aristotle, a Greek philosopher wrote a book called the Nicomachean Ethics in which …show more content…
Lobbyists try to get legislators to pass legislation in their favor or to keep a law in place. In any event, not only are you asking people to always put others before themselves, but also to always think about what you say or do in terms of society as a whole. I am sure not even a dedicated civil rights leader like Mahatma Gandhi could possibly follow through with this. It is just not realistic enough for human beings to adopt. Second, everyone has different views, therefore, having a different opinion on what goodwill is. Kant thinks goodwill is when “the sight of a being is not graced by any touch of a pure and good will…” (Kant, 9). Meaning that your mind is not focused on getting something in return for doing something good because this is the way it is supposed to be. Furthermore, when I asked two students attending Holy Cross what they thought goodwill meant, they gave me completely different responses. The first student, Martin Dorsey, told me goodwill is “when you’re trying to do something right.” The second student, Adonis Pitts, said that it has to do with “being kind and helpful.” So you see here how we have three different definitions of the same