OUR MOST IMPORTANT EVERYDAY USE OF KANT: THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

Abstract

This paper is intended to be a popularisation of Kant practical philosophy’s core and climax, the categorical imperative. In the end, every scientific article is one of popularisation, because science means communication and transparency, and the professional articles do this to and between the professionals of a domain. The present offer is a professional article of philosophy. But its purpose is to be understood by more than the colleagues, because the topic is of utmost importance for all of us. For this reason, the paper explains Kant’s concepts related to the categorical imperative as a problem (and also the “obscure” a priori and transcendental which prove to be simple characteristics of a level of the human reason/reasonable capacity, and thus of concepts and judgements occurring in this level from concepts, and not from experience), and shows how the moral requirements do operate, unfolding the meanings of the categorical imperative. All of these are developed by Kant as reasoning and understanding occurred in the human mind. But all of these are related – however not directly, a posteriori the human experience – just and always to the everyday practice of humans.
How these natural constitutive facts of reason do apply in the social life, as duties and rights sanctioned by the law, both in a state and as rights of states, are discussed; and Kant's limits determined by the historical setting in which he lived seem to be largely overcome by him because of the universalizable he reached in the Groundwork when he elaborates the categorical imperative.
The importance of the universalizable through the form of categorical imperative is more emphasised through the references to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Actually, this importance consists in its inherent continuation, but by surpassing it.