Kant the sky overhead. Conscience: who feels good from it

There have been many attempts in the history of philosophy to understand what makes us behave ethically, why we should behave in such a way, and also to identify the principle on which our moral choice is or could be based. The ethical theory of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant is one of the most notable such attempts.

Background of Kant's ethical theory

« Two things always fill the soul with new and stronger surprise and reverence, the more often and longer we think about them - this is the starry sky above me and the moral law in me. » . - Immanuel Kant

In developing his ethical theory, Kant proceeds from two important premises. The first of them is characteristic of all world philosophy, up to the 19th century. It consists in the fact that there is such knowledge that is eternal, unchanging and universal.

The second premise is characteristic primarily of medieval religious philosophy and may seem very strange. modern man. It consists in the fact that freedom is independence from any circumstances. Kant separates the world of nature and the world of reason or the world of freedom, just as medieval theologians separate the kingdom of the earth and the kingdom of heaven. In the world of nature, man is subject to circumstances and therefore not free. He can become free only if he obeys the dictates of reason (whereas in the Middle Ages freedom consisted in obeying the will of God).

At the same time, the mind is occupied with the knowledge of truth. Accordingly, everything that reason can prescribe to us is something eternal, unchanging and universal, that is, something that everyone should always do.

Three formulations of the categorical imperative

Proceeding from this, Kant develops an ethical system based on the categorical imperative, the requirement of reason to strictly follow the rules he has developed. This imperative has three following from each other and complementary formulations:

1. Act in such a way that the maxim of your will might be a universal law.

This formulation is very simple and follows directly from the premises used by Kant. In fact, he calls on us, when performing this or that action, to imagine what would happen if everyone did this all the time. Moreover, the assessment of the action in this case will not be so much ethical or emotional: “I like it” or “this is not the situation”, but strictly logical. If, in the case where everyone behaves in the same way as we do, the action loses its meaning or becomes impossible, then it cannot be performed.

For example, before lying, imagine that everyone will always lie. Then the lie will be meaningless, because everyone will know that what they are being told is a lie. But at the same time, communication will be almost impossible.

Such a rule cannot serve as a guideline for the actions of all other rational beings, because it destroys itself - it is logically inconsistent.

2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of everyone else, in the same way as an end, and never treat it only as a means.

This formulation follows much less clearly from the above premises, and yet it is both more trivial and more interesting than the first. It proceeds from the fact that the source of any purpose and value is the mind. And it is reason that is the goal of the legislation that it develops.

Accordingly, the goal of legislation is every bearer of reason, every sentient being. If, on the basis of the first formulation of the categorical imperative, we were to make it a rule to use others as means to ends, and not as ends in themselves, then we would be faced with a paradox in which no one and nothing can serve as a source of any end for which we could use one or the other means.

This imperative may seem trivial enough, since it is very similar to " Golden Rule morality: do what you want to be done to you. However, it is interesting in that, firstly, like the first imperative, it is based on logic, and not on desire or value, like the “golden rule”. Second, if the "golden rule" suggests looking at own desires and act towards others as if they were us, then the second formulation of the categorical imperative suggests realizing the value of someone else's life and desires, without replacing them with our own.

From the "golden rule" it can be deduced that if you are, for example, a masochist, then you should hurt other people. Then, due to the clumsy universality of prescriptions, it looks more like the first formulation of the categorical imperative. The second calls us to think about the good of another person. Rather, she advises to replace oneself with another, while the "golden rule" suggests replacing the other with oneself.

3. The third categorical imperative is not as explicitly expressed in the text as the first two. It is formulated by Kant as follows: the idea of ​​the will of every rational being as the will that establishes universal laws».

Here, in a non-obvious way, the first and second formulations of the categorical imperative are combined. The first requires the establishment of universal objective laws. The second requires making the subject the goal of these laws. The third actually repeats the premises and previous formulations.

The meaning of the third formulation is that the will of every rational being must serve as a source of legislation for itself. Only then will it be free to follow this legislation. At the same time, only behavior dictated by reason is free. That is, any rational being must itself establish laws for itself (and the world) and, by virtue of its rationality, desire these laws, since they are aimed at realizing the goals of these beings dictated by reason.

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Having accidentally stumbled upon another opus from Latynina - “Voltaire’s relevance”, where she, with no hesitation, tries to justify the militant hooligans with verbiage about Putin’s Russia, the Inquisition and her own fantasies on the topic of Voltaire, could not resist answering.

Blatantly blaming everything christian church en masse in totalitarianism, Latynina could not resist mentioning Stalin, obviously without such “key words” one might not receive the second “Defender of the Word” award established by the US State Department, this time not from Condoleezza Rice, but from Hillary Clinton herself.

There is an alternative world in Latynina's head; there is no difference between the current Orthodox Patriarch, whom she accuses of having some expensive watches, and, for example, the Catholic Pope Alexander Borgia, a seller of cardinal hats, a poisoner and a lover own daughter, putting an equal sign between similar things and completely forgetting, or maybe not paying attention to some nuances on purpose, if we discard the difference in time epochs: A patriarch is a bishop, the first among equal bishops, presiding at a council and in a synod. Patriarch is an administrative position, as are metropolitans and archbishops., while: in the Catholic Church on earth, the head of the Church, besides the Lord, is the Pope, and Catholics consider his decisions in matters of faith to be infallible (the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope). and the Pope is also considered the vicar of Christ.

It would seem that for Latynina the difference is small, but in fact, what a significant one.

Indulging in arguments about the difference between Christianity and Islam, mercilessly exaggerating and labeling, and ignoring the numerous currents in both teachings, is the popular journalist completely untouched by the feelings of believers, is it interesting for any confessions or just Orthodoxy?

In the strangest way, hanging the sins of the Inquisition on Orthodoxy, the sins of the popes on Orthodox patriarchs, let us keep silent about the allegedly “burnt Copernicus”, who was nevertheless corrected on Giordano Bruno, Latynina, nevertheless, did not begin to recall the so-called “black masses”, worship practices Lucifer inherent in Western civilization. Also, for some reason, she lost sight of the "Hammer of the Witches" - Malleus Maleficarum - a notorious product of Western Christianity, whose sins, with a slight movement of her hand, the well-known journalist deigned to attribute to Orthodoxy.

And maybe not by chance.

The aggressive atheist Voltaire cannot but impress Latynina, I even suspect that she knows what the heresy of the Albigenses, who were also called " kind people”and how the work of Voltaire, a graduate of the Jesuit school and a freemason, resonates with the dogma of the Cathars. It was not for nothing that at one time in France, de Sade, the same Marquis, was published in the same little book with Voltaire: it’s trite, at least they will read something ..

Freemason Voltaire knew for sure What exactly he did, destroying the foundations of the then society, smashing and spitting on the Church, and the French Revolution with millions of victims, and then the arrival of Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars confirm this ...

However, the same trick can be seen at the beginning of the 20th century in Russian Empire, ridiculing the Church, leaflets, moral decline, "everything is permitted, since there is no God" ..

Latynina would, but people like her actually, and a hundred years ago they printed under different names liberal newspapers have their own similar opuses, and now they all either died out in exile or are considered "victims of the bloody regime", although for some reason no one will say: "if you summon a dragon for a long time, then you should remember that you will become his first breakfast (with )"

Although, maybe Latynina believes that she will be in time for her cozy emigration for the next 30 pieces of silver...

Immanuel Kant wrote that two things amazed him: the starry sky above our heads and the moral law inside us, why does the starry sky shine on everyone, even the Latins, but, unfortunately, the “moral law” inside, it turns out, is in the form that it meant Kant, not everyone has.

How did Kant say it?

“All people have a moral feeling, a categorical imperative. Since this feeling does not always induce a person to actions that bring him earthly benefit, therefore, there must be some basis, some motivation for moral behavior that lies outside this world. All this necessarily requires the existence of immortality, the highest court and God ... "

Although Latynina, apparently, is closer to the homosexual Frederick the Great, whom Adolf Hitler called "the hero of genius from Sanssouci, and the ideologist of Nazism Alfred Rosenberg - the "ideal of Nordic beauty", there are so many real Western democratic values ​​​​in this .. and most importantly, no "Putinism" ".

In an amazing way, Ms. Latynina showed that the heresy of the Manicheans and the Albigensian Cathars did not disappear at all in the darkness of centuries, Voltaire, the Marquis de Sade and such Latins would take it out of oblivion - thirsting for only one thing - to bring confusion into souls, to confuse, confuse and enchant with another heresy, hiding behind the “fight against the regime” or “freedom of speech”, forgetting that freedom is not a synonym for the word “permissiveness”.

Quite recently, but for me - it was at the end of the last century - I often met
with school teachers, our, still Sverdlovsk region. But not like a schoolboy
but in the unusual status of a teacher of teachers. In those days, as well as now,
university teachers lectured to teachers - but in this impulse there was no
no system, no deep content.
The teachers were more frightened by their learning than helped in the decisions of his daily
and therefore eternal thoughts.
The first thing I want to talk about is the impression of the first meetings with teachers.
And that first impression has always stayed with me forever.
I remembered the faces of the teachers, tired, thoughtful, beautiful.
But the most important thing, which I remember, was the striking difference in the appearance, character of faces,
teachers, for example, from our regional metropolis and from distant provinces
- settlements lost in the taiga and in the snows on the northwestern outskirts of our
huge area.
City teachers, or rather, teachers, were no different from others.
tired women of the many-sided metropolis: employees, clerks, managers, etc.
And the teachers from distant schools were bright-faced. In their form and speech
another tradition was guessed, the roots of which were lost in the families of the exiles
raznochintsev, students, Decembrists, nobles from the northwestern regions of Russia.

The second event, which belongs to the same time and also remains
in my memory and even somehow changed my life.
If you go north from Yekaterinburg along the Serov road,
then you will pass the city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma, and leave it to the right of the road
local school, which at that time was "German",
that is, with persistent study of the German language.
And this circumstance explained the appearance on the wall in the central
hall of the school of sayings of the famous Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant;

“Two things blow my mind:
starry sky above and
the moral law is within us."

These words were written in large Gothic type in German,
but I recognized them because the efforts of my school teacher
Seraphim Grigorievna Poddiapolskaya did not pass without a trace.
It so happened that the German participation in the life, work and life of such distant
from the front line, a city like ours became more noticeable in the post-war years:
prisoners of war built houses and roads, and later even showed up
distant (and what else could we have?!) relatives of Immanuel Kant.
Finally, after the creation of the Kaliningrad region, the philosopher, although one and a half
centuries after his death, he ended up in the same country with us.

"... the starry sky above your head ..."

Residents of big cities do not see either the stars or the starry sky and
this is nevAnd day and night It didn't start yesterday and it won't end tomorrow.
We are deprived of the starry sky, we have lost the desire and opportunity
navigate by the stars throughout your life, an era has passed
great geographical discoveries, the character and psychology of
inhabitants of maritime empires - Spain and Portugal, and Great Britain
lost its greatness and the Sun, which never set over the great Empire,
now hiding after a modest flight through the sky.
Above us, the "starry sky above our heads" no longer extends,
celestial essence disappeared human life, and we on earth have become quite earthly.

But this is only an appearance. Another profound truth of our connection with the stars has been revealed.
It turns out that we are all living and animated stellar matter,
we consist of substance, substance, of atoms born in the depths of stars.
Such a high origin obliges us to a lot.
".. the starry sky above your head" ...
and stellar matter within us...

But the philosopher was not talking about physical-chemical, material relationship
man and stars, but oh
.... "the moral law within us"...

The essence of the problem lies in the fact that our Earth is “beautiful and maybe
lonely among the shining stars and planets .. to realize that neither in the solar system,
nor, perhaps, in the Galaxy there are no inhabited celestial systems,
and life on Earth is a unique event in the Universe.
And this "loneliness of the inhabited Earth" gives extraordinary significance
and the responsibility of the life and thought of each individual.
And the engine of thought and feeling in the universe is the moral law within us.
Amazing sense of uniqueness and universal scale of life
on Earth it exists in the poems and destinies of Russian poets - Mikhail Lomonosov,
Gabriel Derzhavin, Velimir Khlebnikov, Ksenia Nekrasova.
And in the words and thoughts of Immanuel Kant, our "countryman" from Kaliningrad.

P.S. Still, it's good to go to school from time to time...

Kant said that he was surprised by two things:
starry sky above us
and the moral law within us...

We cannot change the starry sky, but we are quite capable of helping Kant formulate the moral law, and everyone should do this for themselves.
And, of course, the moral law of one person will be somewhat different from another.

1. A bit of history.
Moral laws have been developed by man for a long time and they were very different.
They are usually based on the laws of religion, like commandments that came from God.
The most famous is the Decalogue of Moses.

But studying such laws, one finds contradictions and voids in them - some
practical and important situations are not spelled out at all, and some, by their writing, reinforce the inequality of people (commandment 10 of the decalogue), and this gives rise to doubt about their impeccable origin.

2. Cinderella conscience.
"The moral law within us" is also called the voice of conscience.
Let us first analyze the practical and simple situation of choosing shoes.
There are many types of shoes in the store and we cannot do without the problem of choice.
When we buy shoes in a store, what is the main evaluation criterion for us, besides price, color and country of origin?
That's right, as in Charles Perot's fairy tale: does it fit on the leg?

Our foot here acts as a standard - a censor.

3. "Evry time" or every day.

When we do something every day, we consciously or unconsciously measure them against several categories of choice: desire, necessity, time, place, result or consequences.
And there is another important category that we are talking about according to Kant, which makes people out of us, and which we sometimes forget about - this is the moral law - as an imperative and an answer to the question: is it suitable for us?

There are many human situations. And there are even more moral laws that apply to them. But there are the main ones - from which the rest grow and those without which the rest - lose their meaning.
Some of them are set out in the same decalogue.

4. Moral decalogue.
Let's try to state the basic moral laws without pretending to be true and complete.

4.1. A person should never be deprived of life (killed) under any circumstances and for any reason. There are no reasons, rules, beliefs, obligations or benefits that would justify killing a person. (decalogue sixth commandment.)
4.2. No life can be taken Living being having a living soul and mind.
(For a person, this is already from the moment of conception.)
It can refer to animals, birds, fish, insects, and plants.
4.3. It is forbidden to use dead animals, fish and birds in food and kill them for the purpose of eating them. For eating it is better to use natural products: milk, fruits flora or to synthesize organic food from another or from energy.

This refers to a certain level of personality development.
We proceed from the fact that a person, in general, is endowed with the right and property for himself to choose and establish the norms of what is permitted, corresponding to the level of development of his consciousness and to have all the results of such a choice.

4.4. You can't use violence.
Violence is not acceptable in any form. Society happy people it is a society in which there is no violence.
Our society is at such a level of development that it is forced to single out a group of people who have the right to use violence against those who violate the rights of people set forth in the basic law.
The first thing to say here is that you cannot use parental violence against your child.
And in all cases: The child must not be beaten. The child should not be scolded, frightened and deceived. A child should not be locked up, put in a corner, allegedly for educational purposes, forced to commit actions that are unacceptable to him, humiliate him physically and morally, call him names.
It is impossible for a child to be denied food and care from the parents.
You can not forcibly excommunicate a child from the parents of the mother and father.
It happens that a parent is first deprived of the right to be such, and then excommunicated from the right to raise his child.

4.5. Theft. Any thing, object, clothing, utensils, product is usually in someone's property. She can be taken over by him. different ways: Made, purchased, or received as a gift.
Some important attributes of being have a certificate, brand, logo, ex-libris, signature - establishing the owner. Others, such as pocket money, are a means of payment with a variable right of ownership - they pass from hand to hand.

In any case, the primary, established procedure for determining ownership and the right to possess at the place of location applies: in whose hands (also in an apartment, car, pocket, bank, etc. legal zone) is a thing - he is the owner.
The transfer of ownership from hand to hand can only take place voluntarily.
Changing the right of possession or ownership without the will of the primary owner is theft, embezzlement or robbery.
Coercion is not free will.
It is said: do not steal (decalogue eighth commandment)

4.6. Do not lie.
Man lives in the world of information. There are many ways, means and situations of information transfer, and sometimes its reliability becomes vital.
None of the information, nothing said or written (including those under the authorship of God) should be spared from the verification of authenticity.
Lovers of sophistry and demagogy are looking for such cases when "lying for good."
We do not find such cases. But the information must correspond to the time, place and conditions.
Lies, untruths, lies, as well as the concealment of information that should be accessible and public, makes our life not only uncomfortable, but also unsafe and equates to an attempt on life and health.
Lies encroach on our other fundamental rights and freedoms.
Do not lie. (Commandment Nine)

4.7. Keep out.

Everything in nature and human life should occur freely, naturally - without the interference of some in the lives of others. This also applies to relationships between people and
relations between peoples and countries and, especially, relations between man and nature.
The principle of non-intervention does not negate assistance and complicity.

4.8. Do no harm.
The life and activity of man should take place under this primary motto.

4.9. Do not turn over.
Do not deprive or restrict free will and freedom of choice. This can apply to both humans and animals. It's not about who it applies to.
First of all, it is within oneself - the daily observance of this moral law.
"Turn over" here in the sense of limiting along the perimeter.

4.10. Don't commit adultery.

Man is created, born and lives in an atmosphere of love.
The seventh commandment does not explain what has been said.
The feeling of love is boundless and free. The foregoing says that a person is triune - he consists of a body, soul and spirit.
"Adultery" refers only to bodily - physical love.
Love is primarily spiritual. And the emergence of physical love, more precisely, hormonal attraction, without spiritual love, this is the disharmony of relationships.

5. Moralisms.
And, of course, moral laws are set out here that have the nature of prohibitions and restrictions, but the basic laws of morality are those that encourage action.

Related terms
1. Rigorism
- a moral principle that characterizes the way the requirements are met
morality, which consists in strict and unswerving observance of certain moral norms, regardless of specific circumstances, in unconditional obedience.
2. Principle - a formulated general thesis, meaning the concept of good and bad.

3. Law of talion - the imposition of punishment for a crime, according to which the punishment should reproduce the harm caused by the crime ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth").

4 MORALITY - Internal, spiritual qualities that guide a person, ethical standards; rules of conduct determined by these qualities (Ozhegov)
5. Hegel in the "Philosophy of Law" presented morality, in contrast to abstract law and morality, as the final stage in the development of the spirit in and manifested in the family and civil society.

Reviews

Everything is interesting, especially the idea itself - morality is within us

Additions.
A man does not know what he wants until it is given to him. It's about not getting involved.
In addition, if "Thou shalt not kill" is accepted, then one must intervene to prevent the killing.

Regarding lies. The problem is that people lie primarily to themselves.
In an expanded sense, this is a misunderstanding of oneself and one's desires.

Thanks Michael.
"Besides, if 'Thou shalt not kill' is accepted, then one must intervene to prevent the killing" - sounds like sophism.
Where will the "murders" come from if everyone keeps the Great Commandment?
And laws, including moral ones, work only when they are observed.

"Additions. A man does not know what he wants until it is given to him"
If a person does not know what he wants, he is not yet a person, but rather an animal.

"Regarding lies. The problem is that a person lies primarily to himself.
In an expanded sense, this is a misunderstanding of oneself and one's desires.

Well, while there is a misunderstanding and a lie to oneself about moral laws, it’s too early to talk

The starry sky above us and the moral law within us

      The scientific way of knowing the world is special, different from others. Three hundred years ago, having declared through the mouth of Laplace that science "no longer needs the hypothesis of the existence of God," scientists, seeking to know the world, concentrated all their strength and ability on a rational approach to explaining natural entities and on empirical verification. At the same time, when setting up experiments and explaining their results, the scientist never considered himself a part of the investigated Nature. He tried to discover simple and unambiguous laws that would make it possible to describe and predict any event while being, as it were, outside the world he was exploring, somewhere above.
     In fact, the intellect of the scientist was transferred to the functions of God, superseded by science as unnecessary. The prestige of philosophy, answering the question of the meaning of being, has fallen sharply, but the prestige of applied science, answering the questions of the structure of being, has risen high. All the power of the human mind, free from the search for the meaning of life, was directed to the study of the material world accessible to rational science with the sole purpose of creating material wealth.
                Logically comprehending the world, rational science simplifies it, as it can comprehend something only by breaking the whole into parts and studying them separately. And scientists tore the world into thousands of sovereign sciences, because the time of technological progress required not philosophers who explain the world, but people who change it, narrow specialists who thoroughly know only their own sphere, separate from others. This has led to the fact that scientists have ceased to see the world in its integrity, in its volume.
       The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote about such a specialist: "He cannot be called educated, since he is a complete ignoramus in everything that does not concern his specialty. At the same time, he is not ignorant in the eyes of society, since he is a "man of science" , and knows perfectly his tiny area of ​​​​knowledge. He should be called ignorant scientists ... these people symbolize the power of science and exercise real power, forming public opinion. Their barbarism is the direct cause of the degradation of knowledge and of society itself."
     And the fact that today many educated people, often specialists with higher education, continue to reject the existence of a world unfamiliar to them, is explained only by their ignorance associated with narrow specialization.
      Bernard Shaw said about specialization: "A specialist is a person trained not to understand anything beyond his specialty.....