The Deontology In Kant's Moral Philosophy

Kant believed only the actions from duty have moral worth,"duty"is an important concept in the moral philosophy of Kant. Kant's moral philosophy is often considered as deontology.This essay concerned the origins and backgrounds of duty at first. Vision of duty has close relationships with natural law which means moral restraint in western religion and the custom of reason. Meanwhile, the innovation of duty in Kant's philosophy was much influenced by the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century; therefore, Kant's ethic had the characters of religion and the spirit of the Enlightenment. Especially Kant's view of human being, everyone is considered as a legislator of himself; therefore, Kant eliminated the God as legislator which the religion advocated and the passive obedience of human being to duty.Kant had confidence that human can achieve the morality to a great extent, because there was a universal self-evident view in the reason. In Grounding for the Metaphysics of morals, Kant discussed the process from ordinarily moral consciousness to the moral law. The universality of moral sense stems from the subject will which belongs only to the rational being. The will has a potential tendency to make rules for agent. There are two kinds of principles impact on will, one is a subjective principle of volition called maxim, and the other is objective principle called practical law. Accordingly, there are two different will: the human will and the holy will. The will gives rational being capacity to choose their act and recognize the objective principle, on the other hand, the ordinarily human will might be affected by the sensuous impulses thus deviate from the good will. When the subjective principle conflicts with the objective principle, reason will proclaim the moral orders thereby determining the action. This constraint of moral law to fulfill the requirement of practical reason called the duty.The key of rational being's initiative is the will, since the nature of the will is freedom. The freedom is the cornerstone of Kant's moral system, thus it is important in understanding the essence of duty. In the theoretical area, freedom has negative effect, but freedom is necessary in moral practical area. The existence of freedom renders the duty from moral law possible. Kant explicated the positive freedom which called autonomy for human being. In the rational practice, autonomy transforms the restraint of duty into the voluntary requirement of rational being and creates the action originating from the duty. Although the objective categorical imperative generates the power of constraint, duty is the evidence of freedom since the spontaneous will and the obedient will is the same will. Therefore, the duty that people have to assume is the result of their own rational choice and it is not contradicted between obey the duty and enjoy the freedom.Duty is pivotal in moral practice. The will is not always act according to the good action. The will needs an evident motivation to guide the action. Kant considered the duty as the motivation. Only the action from the duty is moral and has the moral worth. The other motivations such as benefit or emotion which are accordance with duty do not have moral worth, because these sensuous things are not stable in different conditions. They cannot ensure the necessity of moral actions; therefore the actions from these factors do not have moral worth. Kant distinguished the action only from duty and the action in accordance with duty.Kant classified the duty from different perspectives. The juridical duties and ethical duties are two fundamental duties. The juridical duty comes from the outside constraints; the ethical duty comes from the constraints of autonomy. Furthermore, according to the extent of restriction of duty, Kant divided the perfect and imperfect duties. The ethical duty is the imperfect duty and the juridical duty is perfect duty. The ethical duties can be divided into the duties to oneself and the duties to others according to the objects of duty.There are divergent views about the status of'end'in Kant's philosophy. The point of this essay is Kant did not exclude the importance of end despite the feature of deontology in his philosophy. On the contrary, end reflects the possibility of freedom. Since only the will concerns an end, it is self-determination and generates the maxim to guide the action. Meanwhile, the existence of duty brings the self-restriction into the end. Kant thought it is necessary to find a duty combined with end. Only the duty of virtue is the obligatory end, there are two obligatory ends: perfection of self and happiness of others.Kant's moral philosophy has profound impact on subsequent theories. Along with the development of era, the deontological ethic confronts many difficulties. The cardinal reason of these difficulties is that scholars cannot establish the moral theory on the ground of metaphysics. If do not depend on the metaphysics, how can scholars constitute the instructively moral theory and fulfill the function of duty consistently. Onora O'Neill believed we can depend on the practical reason to constitute an authoritative ethic principle which has extent. Moreover, this kind of principle should has the form of'ought to'which contains the duties thereby instructing the actions more effectively.