Abstract:

Abstract enKant has endeavored to develop a pure rational ethics through investigating morality, free from any emotional motivation and its consequences. He refused the previous moral notions putting happiness and teleology at the center of ethics, and replaced them with the notion of deontology. Parallel to his understanding of morality, Kant advanced a novel notion of freedom constructed on autonomy of the reason. The concept of freedom constitutes the crisscrossing point of his theoretical and practical philosophies. His attempt to reconcile his notion of freedom with the deterministic notion of nature, which is based on a web of causality without exception, is one of the most complex problematics of his philosophy. While attempting to demonstrate the possibility of freedom in his theoretical philosophy Kant rests, in his practical philosophy, the reality of morality on the consciousness of the moral law, which he characterizes as the only factuality of the reason. In Kant‟s philosophy, freedom and morality constitute the inseparable terms from one another, and voluntary freedom is nothing but to conform to imperatives of the moral law of pure reason. He claims that pure reason should be the mere source for morality to be realized. This can only be made possible if and when the moral conducts act would be purified from all emotional and purposeful elements and be pursued with a consciousness of duty which stems from the respect for moral law. With his categorical imperative, Kant attributes the moral judgment to the ability of the criterion for the rational principles underlying the moral conducts act that could be universalized. Kant has attempted to overcome the moral relativism, and to construct as well, a universal morality by setting the reason abstracted from experience as the basis for the moral authority. However, attaining the goal of pure rationalism in the Kant‟s philosophy has paved the way for constructing an empty formalism and an ethical rigorism.

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