The Mindet Of Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative

In the mindset of Immanuel Kant, one would be completing their duty in life, when one would complete an action that spreads happiness around them, as well as within themselves, without any other gain. According to Kant, a person is considered a good person when they are of good will, and that a person of good will is one who completes their duty without any self-interest inclinations in mind. When one completes their duty then they are preforming their moral obligations to society. Kant believed that the only thing of moral worth was good will. A will is not good because of the accomplishment or outcome, but because of the good in the will itself. The motive of a person’s actions of good will is by doing the right thing, because it is the
Truthfulness was one of the most sacred imperatives to Kant’s philosophy. Kant believed that one should act only on the maxim through which you at the same time can will that it is a universal law. According to Kant, he believed that it is a formal duty for everyone to tell the truth even if it meant that it would put an individual at a disadvantage. Kant would further this by explaining that it would be wrong to lie even to a murderer who was trying to locate their victim, because it would breach his Categorical Imperative for truthfulness. Kant’s moral theory requires us to ignore the consequences of the action because it would do harm to humanity and cause general distrust in society. The second maxim according to Kant’s Categorical Imperative is that he really believed in that we should only treat individuals as a ends in themselves, not as a means only. We should not use human beings, we should not exploit them for personal gain. We, as humans, have a duty to seek the happiness of others more than oneself, because we should not promote ones owns happiness, if that happiness prevents others
In this case, the greater good should be one that does not cause any harm. The biggest difficulty with Kant’s truth maxim is that it is contradictory to human behavior. Most people would find it more important to try and save the murderer’s victim then to tell the murderer where they were. If one were to lie to the murderer, then one would be doing the greater good because they are not allowing the murderer to cause any harm. Therefore, one could argue that Kant’s duty to always tell the truth, should take into consideration, the consequences of that truth, so that the greater good could prevail. With Kant’s theory, he is expecting us to accept huge and absurd reasoning, such as, the consequences of our actions are irrelevant to morality and how we think. You could compare this to the actions that a doctor has to do. According to Kant’s theory, then one should not cut someone because we could not accept people cutting one another as a universal law. However, the duty of a doctor is to help others stay alive and according to the moral law of one should not cut someone else, then the doctor would not be allowed to cut their patient in order to heal them if the consequences were not thought deciding factor. A problem with Kant’s theory is that he believed that our duties were absolute and we are obligated to obey the commands of our duties. The problem with this is when one would be in a moral dilemma, at