Categorical Imperative Research Paper

If we want to understand categorical imperative, we should first look into deontology. Deontology is the opposite view of consequentialisms because they judge the rightness or wrongness of an action by themselves. In their view, every action has a moral value and actions can be wrong and bad by themselves which is contrary to the consequentialism that believes that judge an action depending on its consequences. One of the pioneers of deontology is the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He argues that the only intrinsically valuable thing in this world is good will. He also proposed and introduce an idea called the principle of universality that help us determine the morality of an action. Kant discover that morality was basically a set of commands, so he divided these commands into two categories: hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. Furthermore, he always advocates for categorical because he believed that categorical imperatives are the base of morality. …show more content…
In the first place, the hypothetical imperatives are imperatives that deal with the aspiration of achieving a goal. As an example, if we want to pass a class, we should study or if we want to be healthy, we should eat healthy and workout. These imperatives are not necessarily essential. It is only important if we want the benefits of our actions. On the other hand, there are categorical imperatives which have nothing to do with the results of our action. Categorical imperatives must be follow unconditionally regardless of the circumstances. For example, let’s say that we are in a situation in which killing an innocent person will benefit us greatly and our dream always has been a millionaire. Even though killing that person would help us achieve our goal, it is wrong categorically because it is wrong regardless of the achievement of our goals. To Kant, Morality should be all about categorical imperatives which are