Hypothetical imperative

“Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny” -Harry S Truman. He is saying that your actions determine your fate, which influences your destiny. He is warning us to be careful of what we do. This is also shown in the play Macbeth. In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the main character Macbeth is a nobleman to King Duncan. The play starts with Macbeth being a war hero by helping them win the war. This leads to the witches telling him he will become king. Macbeth believes them and ends up…

Albert Camus addresses the steps one should take when dealing with the notion of absurdity in order to make the choice to live without appeal. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus defines the clash between the irrational world and humans seeking for rational answers as absurdity. He then outlines the best solution for acknowledging the lack of meaning in life while not turning to suicide. There are many parallels to his reasoning in The Plague, where he uses the threat of sickness in a quarantined…

If one is honest, they are to be free of deceit and untruthfulness; sincere. The quality of being honest is honesty. Although characters in The Great Gatsby are quite sincere, they fall short in the possession of honesty. The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which depicts how American life was during the Roaring Twenties. The narrator of the novel is Nick Carraway, a former soldier whom is now selling bonds in New York. This novel became significant because it has given a…

singular about motivation by duty is that it consists of bare respect for the moral law. Duties are rules or laws of some sort combined with some sort of felt constraint or incentive on our choices. It’s almost like an obligation by the Categorical Imperative. But Kant draws a distinction between the duties of perfect and imperfect. But Kant states, Perfect duties come in the form “One must never (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C”, while imperfect duties, since they require us to…

ethics is deontological, in terms of moral theory. Due to that fact, Kantian ethics does not consider the consequences of an action but on whether it fulfills one's duty defined in the categorical imperative. Imperatives are forms of command; in this case, Kantian ethics abides by the categorical imperative which is defined as an objective that is rationally necessary and an unconditional principle that we must always take after in spite of any common wishes or slants we may have. All particular…

In his essay “Moral Luck, Self-cultivation, and Responsibility: The Confucian Conception of Free Will and Determinism,” Kyung-Sig Hwang of Seoul National University seeks to demonstrate from a practical stance why Confucianism fits best with a compatibilist view on free will and then, by analyzing this conclusion from a theoretical stance, argue that a deterministic view could also be accepted. He begins by discussing moral luck and responsibility, which segues into the problems with both a…

help others, regardless of whether doing so serves a self-interest or not. From there, I will go ahead and prove the argument by way of both the universal law formulation and the humanity formulation, which are two elements of Kant’s Categorical Imperative procedure, used to test rules of morality. Finally, I will build a contrasting image of Kant’s moral theory to John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarian moral theory, through the use of examples (Mill). Exposition Firstly, it is important to know that…

George Moore was a British philosopher who primarily studied ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. He devised a remarkable paradox: Let’s suppose it is raining outside but you do not believe that it is raining, and you strongly commit to saying and believing that it is not raining. This could come across to some as an absurd or nonsensical thing to stress, but it could still be true. It could be raining outside, but you are entirely unaware of the current state of the weather. It can’t be…

Morality is often revered important and inviolable because people generally assume morality is grounded in something transcendental such as tradition, God, or reason. In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche critiques the value of moral judgments through a genealogical method that examines the origins and meanings of different moral concepts. In the first essay, Nietzsche distinguishes between “master morality” and “slave morality”; master morality was enforced by the masters who were powerful,…

In Miller’s, Bhagavad Gita, Krishna shows that any action performed must be without the mindset of having an attachment or want in order to be able to see the fruits. The Bhagavad-Gita shows its audience that they should ignore the end fruits and just carry on with their endeavors with disregard to the end result. In contrast to the Gita, the Tao Te Ching represents a teaching of inaction to reach one’s ultimate form of a complete state of mind. The Bhagavad-Gita is able to provide insight into…