Kant attempts to establish a moral philosophy on how humans should live and how our actions are determined. He says that this can be established through reason. Empiricists such as Hume stated that reason cannot tell us what is right or wrong, it can yield no practical solution; we are a slave to our passions and nothing more.

The theory starts with the question “what is morality?” and “where does morality come from?”. Kant answers that it comes from the “good will” which is a person’s capacity to act out their intentions. So our moral theory begins by looking inwardly at ourselves and doing so by applying the faculty of reason. To put it simply, using reason allows us to ask if an action is good for me and good for others, narrowing down what is a good universal moral theory.

So if our moral theory comes from ourselves, then we have a duty to uphold it, there is nothing external that tells us what our morals should look like (so this excludes the idea of God as the law giver or looking outwards to external events such as making judgments based on consequences).

From this, Kant brings forward that this moral theory must be unconditional i.e. it must be good in every circumstance for every person. So how do we conclude what is a good moral value? Cue the categorical imperative which is as follows:

“act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”

Or

“Can my moral principle that I choose to live by, work if everyone else followed it all the time”

For example I believe in the moral principle that everyone should tell the truth. If everyone followed this rule, can any bad come out of this? Are there any contradictions that mean that this principle is no longer good?

There is one other condition to consider when assessing our moral values: that it should not be subjective to the person. You must do away with your personal beliefs, happiness, sympathies, love or hate for others. It must be an objective value.

Two people of the same region, roughly the same age, do the same action. They both stop to pick up an old lady who has fallen to the floor. In that instance you can ask them both “why?”. One states that it is due to their religious beliefs dictating that this is how any person should act; veneration of elders, care for the infirm (to help them survive & help them with their objectives where practicable etc). The other for ultimately arbitrary reasons, they gave into their base compulsion to do the deed without much thought, there is some consideration for the possibility of them being in that situation in the future, and fostering the type of environment that promotes similar behaviour. Is there a wider value, particularly in terms of superiority and inferiority [if such a difference exists], to one over the other? “Is one approach better than the other?”

Phenomenology is a field of philosophy that tries to describe what our experience of the world is, from our perspective. It comes up with theories on how our consciousness interacts with the world. By understanding our relationship with the world, we can get closer to understanding things like our existence, what knowledge is, what ethics we should live by and so on.

So to answer questions about knowledge and ethics, some phenomenologists believe that we need to understand our existence first, some believe that we need to understand consciousness itself and some believe that we must acknowledge our freedom before we begin to understand anything else.

Levinas believes that these starting points are incorrect, because they are self-centered; looking to the self is an insufficient starting point in trying to understand how we interact with the world. What he instead suggests is looking at our relationship with others, as a starting point for developing any branch of philosophy. It’s the ethical responsibility towards the other that is the first philosophy to adopt.

So why this ethical responsibility?

When we encounter the other person, it is the most fundamental experience. There’s something that stirs deep inside when we look at the face of another, an ethical demand to be responsible, to not harm that person. This feeling is inherent, it’s automatic, it comes before any philosophical theory.

Before we come up with any theory of knowledge, the relationship between humans comes first.