Immanuel Kant lived in the 18th century and is considered to be one of the greatest German
philosophers and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers of all time.
His philosophical revolution was to place the human at the center of the philosophical
study of knowledge, morality, and beauty.
He deeply believed that reason is the root of morality.
His thoughts on the relationship between reason and human experience led to the notion of
“procedural humanism” or “Kantian humanism”.
The work of Immanuel Kant is still relevant today as the humanistic values of Western
culture are deeply influenced by the Kantian moral philosophy.
To understand his moral philosophy and its relevance in the modern world better, here
are 10 Life Lessons from Immanuel Kant: 1) Do not treat others as merely means
Kant says: “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”
Kant considered humanity an end in itself, that human beings do not exist for some external
purpose, their purpose is to achieve their fullest perfection through their own freedom,
their existence is a creation whose dignity must be protected at all costs.
In other words, we need to treat people with respect, seeing them firstly as human beings
and not as a means that we can use to achieve our goals.
This doesn’t forbid us to use the services of other people, if this is part of their
job and as long as they perform that service willingly.
We have to connect to other people in a way that we respect their freedom and humanity,
in a way that honors their dignity.
Kant didn’t refer here only to how to behave in respect to other people, but also to how
we think about our interaction with them.
Every human being has their own absolute moral worth.
Things like lying, violence and deception are never alright.
If somebody is deceived, they cannot make an autonomous decision about how to act, because
their decision is based on false information.
The person who deceives is totally disrespecting the other person’s goals, interests and
feelings.
You can use people as means, but never as merely means.
For example, consider you are in a coffee shop and you want to order a coffee from the
waitress.
You can use the waitress to get your coffee, but you have to respect her as a human being
at the same time, you should not yell at her if she is late and you should not embarrass
her in front of her managers and other customers.
Treating her with respect means using her as an end, not as merely a means.
2) Fight for freedom Kant tells us: “Freedom is the faculty that
enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.”
Kant is often called “the philosopher of freedom” and indeed, many of the modern
concepts of human rights are based in his philosophy.
Human rights are derived from the idea of freedom and, according to Kant, it is imperative
to protect the freedom of all people.
So we cannot trample on one person's right in order to help others.
For example, killing a healthy person to distribute their organs to other sick people would be
wrong even though two or three lives could be saved, or even one million.
Everyone has an essential human dignity which, no matter what, cannot be trampled upon.
Kant's perception of freedom is also related to the right to control one's acts according
to reason, not according to one’s feelings.
Although everybody has the right to be free, not everybody is as free as they should be.
Therefore, there is always a struggle involved and we all should participate in the fight
to liberate every human from any form of tyranny.
Only by being free, are people able to develop themselves, to enlarge their possibilities,
to increase the number of choices they can make in life.
Being free is a prerequisite of any great human development.
Kant didn’t define freedom in the libertarian sense, you are not free to do whatever you
want, you are free only when you act in accordance with your best nature and we are slaves whenever
we are under the rule of our passions or of others.
For Kant, a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.
Freedom is not the absence of government, it is a state that allows everybody to become
more reasonable and rational.To create a better world for you and for others, to increase
the overall freedom of all, you need to protect your human rights, your freedom, as well as
the rights and freedom of all the people around you, whoever they are.
For example, women are less discriminated against nowadays compared to centuries past,
today you can find them working in every sector of industry and in many branches of the government
and this is due to their fight to gain equal rights and freedom.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Regardless of whether you are a woman or not, everybody can contribute to improving the
status of women around the world, to enable them to become citizens with equal rights
everywhere, and to assure their freedom.
This is just as true for LGBTQ+ communities or any minority group.
We need to pay attention to what we vote for, to go out and protest against immoral laws,
immoral behaviour and anything that affects people’s freedom as long as that demanded
freedom does not interfere with other people’s freedom and rights.
3) Respect animals In the words of Kant “He who is cruel to
animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
It is imperative to respect any conscious being and it has recently been proven by science
that mammals, or at least a part of them, are conscious beings.
These findings were made public by the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in 2012.
Being conscious beings, animals have a certain amount of reasoning faculties.
If Kant knew about the scientific evidence that some animals have consciousness, he would
probably have declared that it is an imperative duty to respect those animals’ rights for
a good life, to abstain from any cruel treatment towards them.
Animals are living species the same as humans, just with a low intelligence.
It is our duty to be their guardian.
This Kantian philosophy can be implemented in one’s life through the humane treatment
of animals, by not subjecting them to harm, by protesting against cruel treatment, such
as experiments for cosmetics, destroying natural habitat like clearing the rainforests of the
Amazon to raise beef cattle or hunting animals that are in danger of extinction such as whales
or rhinos.
4) Act from duty To quote Kant: “An action, to have moral
worth, must be done from duty.”
Kant argues that human action is only morally acceptable if it is done from a sense of duty.
That duty is a formal principle that is not based on self-interest or considering what
results might follow.
Kant took the business of morality to be a matter of pure rational will.
He thinks that to decide something based on logic and reason is far better than to choose
something based on feelings and emotions.
When emotions and feelings become dominant in our intelligence, then we often do things
we end up regretting.
Emotions tend to affect us so much, often taking us to extremes from great pleasure
and happiness to great sorrow, but they should not be the ones in charge of taking the decisions
instead of us.
We have to train ourselves to be calm in any situation and always strive to be virtuous
beings who perform their duties.
Let’s imagine the case of a customer service agent.
If she does her job with a smile on her face, being polite to every customer out of a sense
of duty because this is part of her job, then this is morally more valuable than if she
puts the smile on her face because she genuinely cares for her customers.
In the last case, her feelings might change if somebody dies in her family for example
and she would not be able to have the same smile.
In the first case, no matter what happens in her private life, she will do her job,
because this is her duty.
In the long run, she will serve better the customers overall, assuring a constant level
of quality in regards to her job, benefiting thus every customer with whom she interacts.
5) Have your own moral law Kant says:“Two things fill the mind with
ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflect upon them:
the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
In Kantian philosophy, the moral law is not given by supernatural forces, but comes from
within and it is also something that binds society.
Religion and morality is, in his view, a terrible pair.
In order to determine what is right, you have to use your faculties of reasoning and a high
consideration for other people.
Before you act on anything, you should ask yourself: what is the maxim of my action?
What is the general rule am I following here?
Keep in mind that you need at the same time to respect the imperative to treat people
as ends in themselves and not as merely means.
You should not do to others the things you don’t want to be done to you.
For example, if you are planning to steal something, then you must follow the rule that
everybody should be entitled to steal.
Then you need to reflect if that would be a better society…Obviously, this reasoning
will lead you to contradictions in this case.
Moral actions cannot bring about moral contradictions.
If you are to steal something from a shop, the owner of the shop should have the right
to steal something from you too.
Therefore, stealing is not universalizable.
You are not allowed to make an exception for yourself in the Kantian world.
6) Never lie In the words of Kant: “By a lie a man throws
away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.”
From all the immoral things one can do, lying is one of the things on which Kant put a lot
of focus.
According to him, you are not allowed to lie to cover yourself or in any other circumstances,
not even in the situations you might save somebody’s life.
Legally, you cannot be blamed for telling the truth.
People cannot really predict the future, nobody knows if a lie or a truth can save lives in
exceptional situations like kidnapping, terrorist attacks and so on.
Imagine a criminal trying to enter a married couple’s house.
If they knock, the wife answers the door and they inform her they are looking for her husband
so they can murder him, the wife has to choose between telling the truth or a lie.
According to Kantian philosophy, if she lies to cover for him but the criminals catch her
husband and kill him anyway, she will be partially responsible.
If she tells the truth they may well find and kill him more easily than if she had lied,
however, because she told the truth she would not be to blame for his death.
Following the same reasoning, you should never lie, not even to soothe someone’s pain,
not even to protect against a harsh reality.
It is not your right to hide the truth from anyone.
You cannot know the power of someone to handle the truth, you are not allowed to take decisions
in somebody’s place.
For example, if you have bad news to share with someone, if you did something bad and
you fear the judgment of another person may it be your boss or your spouse, you need to
go ahead and tell the news, no matter how this can affect their judgment of you.
Taking responsibility for the mistakes you made is a sign of a virtuous and morally strong
person.
7) Become worthy of happiness According to Kant: “Morality is not properly
the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy
of happiness.”
Contrary to the US constitution, Kant didn’t affirm that everybody has the right to happiness,
but, instead, they must first become worthy of happiness, emphasizing the importance of
being a moral person, a virtuous person.
There are happy people who do not deserve to be happy as much as there are unhappy people
who deserve fully to become happy.
Life is a constant struggle between our rational mind and our emotions.
Kant’s concept was to understand how to strengthen our rational part, our better selves,
in order to win out weaknesses and selfishness.
There are things we do for moral reasons and things we do for immoral reasons.
Most of the time, whether or not we ought to do something isn’t really a moral choice
– instead, it’s just contingent on our desires.
Like: if you want to have more money, you try to get another job.
If you want a better score in school, you need to study more.
These decisions are all optional and they do not involve morality.
You are free to choose any action you want, you would not be morally blamed if you choose
one thing or another like if you don’t want any money, then you don’t need another job,
if you don’t care about grades, you don’t need to study so much.
What relates to morality are “categorical imperatives” - imperatives which are true
at all times, in all situations.
These imperatives you must follow regardless of your desires.
They are moral obligations, derived from “pure reason”.
One of the most important of them is to treat other people as ends in themselves and not
as merely means.
If you follow all the categorical imperatives, then you become worthy to be happy.
For example, you do not deserve to have the professional success and prestige if you are
lying to your boss regarding some work details, to cover your incompetence.
You do not deserve to be happy and have a great family life if you lie to your spouse
regarding how you spend the money or where you have been last night.
You do not deserve to be a popular person if you manipulate your group of friends into
thinking you are more successful professionally than you really are.
Always strive to be a moral person, even if it costs you in life more emotional pain,
more time, or more financial troubles.
8) Do not base your morality on religion In the words of Kant: “Nothing is divine
but what is agreeable to reason.”
Kant’s family was deeply religious and very strict.
Although he didn’t hold conventional religious beliefs, he was very aware of how important
religion is for social cohesion and for providing life meaning in face of harsh difficulties.
Kant was also a pessimist regarding human character and he was considering that we are
very prone to corruption.
It was this awareness that helped him to develop his life project in philosophy, a new moral
philosophy.
He wanted to replace religious authority with an authority built on the foundation of moralistic
reasoning.
He wanted to do a similar job to what religions intended to do, but following the ways of
reason.
Kant said everybody should base their morality on reason, regardless of religious beliefs
- or the lack of them.
He saw morality in a mathematical sense.
whether you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or atheist, the same is always
true for morality.
One should never declare that something is right or wrong just because your book of faith
says so.
Moreover, you should never impose on other people, your imported notions of right and
wrong.
Instead, try to reach moral conclusions using your faculties of reasoning, develop your
own moral code based on reasoning and on intellectual discussions with other people.
Kant didn’t deny any rights for humans to have their own faith, himself being a declared
Christian, but he emphasized the importance of being a rational being.
9) Do not let people step on you As we learn from Kant: “One who makes himself
a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.”
You need to be able to see the reflection of yourself in others and to respect them
as you respect yourself.
And, to truly respect yourself, you need to obey the principles of reason, to always be
true to yourself and to not harm yourself or let others violate your boundaries, rights
and freedoms.
By extension, you need to respect others in the same way.
The lesson is a derivation from the principle of treating other people and yourself as ends
in themselves, and not as merely means.
The lesson focuses on avoiding to treat yourself as merely means.
Basically, you should not use yourself to achieve your goals if by doing this you reduce
your humanity and self-respect.
No matter what is at stake, it can even be winning the presidency, but if you have to
denigrate yourself, lower your humanity and self-respect, don’t do it.
Don’t treat yourself as less than human, do not put pressure on yourself which can
harm you physically, mentally, emotionally, no matter what is at stake.
For example, do not ask for forgiveness in front of a manager for something you didn’t
do, do not take the blame for a mistake somebody else did.
Always hold your ground and say the truth, even if it may cost you a job, a relationship,
money, time or if it is about somebody else’s job, relationship, money or time.
Never humiliate yourself to make gains in life for yourself or for somebody you care
about.
10) Get busy In our final slice of wisdom from Kant in
this video: “The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious
we are of life.”
For Kant, it is a moral duty for us to try to develop our skills, to explore our talents,
it is in some ways our duty towards humanity to give our contributions, no matter how small.
Having an organized life is also very important, it will help us get more done.In this regard,
Kant was a very unusual person, he had a fixed schedule for everything: for over 40 years,
he was waking up at the same hour, 5 AM, he was writing for 3 hours, then he was going
to university to teach, he was having his daily walk at exactly the same time, having
dinner with the same friend every evening, going to sleep at exactly the same time, 10
PM.
He lived in the same town for his entire life.
This highly organized life probably helped him in creating such a philosophical masterpiece.
To fulfill your potential in this life is your moral duty towards humanity.
Think of all the skills and talents you have, try to use them in the most efficient way
and organize your life around them.
Monitor your health, your emotional state in order to become a highly efficient being.
Your time is very precious and learning how to have better time management skills is extremely
important.
Make a list of all of the skills and talents you have, choose very carefully the projects
to commit to and organize your time in order to make them a priority.
So, if you enjoyed this video, please do make sure to check out the full Philosophies for
Life channel and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using ancient philosophical
wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks so much for watching.