Moral law

Connor Newlin

In an attempt to clarify some things for myself and others I will try to summarize Kant’s thoughts on moral law towards the end of the chapter. A universal law of morality is a very difficult thing to try and pin down because there are almost always exceptions to a given situation. Kant I believe then tries to convey the message that people are the solution to finding a moral law. The human brain at work after being presented with a situation and considering actions and consequences of actions is itself a working solution to the question of moral law. While we cannot pin down a single blanket statement for a universal moral law we can say that a rational human being’s intuition about a situation would generally be thought of as the most common solution. Moral law is that which is generally accepted in daily lives of those who perform actions.

Consequences of actions seem almost irrelevant in Kant’s eyes as he sees the important part of morality being the intent of a person to do good. Human beings think of their actions of good or bad usually by the consequences while Kant is trying to zero in on just actions themselves being intrinsically good. Some may argue that Hitler meant to do good in his extermination of a religious people but this was a consequence of a complex situation and Kant may say that his small actions leading up to this event were somewhat harmless by themselves.