Immanuel Kant
You believe morality is a matter of principle: act only in ways you could will for everyone. Reason sets the rules, and you keep them.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
What you’d believe
- The Copernican revolution in knowledgeThe mind actively structures experience: space, time, and the categories are forms we impose, so we know the world as it appears (phenomena), never things in themselves (noumena).
- The categorical imperativeAct only on that maxim you could will to become a universal law, and always treat humanity, in yourself and others, as an end and never merely as a means.
- Autonomy and the limits of reasonMorality rests on the autonomy of the rational will giving itself the law; and reason, when it strays beyond possible experience, falls into contradictions (antinomies).
