Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn.

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Guests

• Alison Hills No other episodes
  Professor of Philosophy at St John's College, Oxford
• David Oderberg No other episodes
  Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading
• John Callanan 3 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King's College, London

Reading list

• Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader's Guide
  P. Guyer (Continuum, 2007) Google Books →
• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
  Immanuel Kant (trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmerman) (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• Creating the Kingdom of Ends
  Christine Korsgaard (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Google Books →
• Kant: A Very Short Introduction
  Roger Scruton (Oxford University Press, 2001) Google Books →
• Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: An Introduction
  Sally Sedgwick (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• An Introduction to Kant's Ethics
  Roger J. Sullivan (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Google Books →
• Kant
  Allen W. Wood (Blackwell, 2005) Google Books →
• Kant's Ethical Thought
  Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b0952zl3

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0952zl3

Auto-category: 170 (Ethics and moral philosophy)