HKB
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Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · justice as a virtue · duty, conscience, and obligation · universal legislation · respect for the moral law · reason and the intellect · plato’s republic · objective necessity called duty · morality as relation to universal legislation · moral worth of persons · kinship, lineage, and clan · humanity as an end in itself
Usually: argument (3) · detachment (2) · reverence (2) · reflection (1) · curiosity (1)
“We may call the consciousness of this fundamental law a fact of reason, because we cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, e.g., the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given), but it forces itself on us as a synthetic a priori proposition, which is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical.” Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason · insight
“The foundations of right lie, he says, not in external act, but in the inner man: not in convention, but in nature: not in relation to others, but in the constitution of the soul itself.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind · insight
“His “temperance” or “self-restraint,” if it be far from breathing any suggestion of self-suppression or self-assertion, is still farther from any suspicion of asceticism, or war against the flesh. It is the noble harmony of the ruling and the ruled, which makes the latter a partner of the sovereign, and takes from the dictates of the ruler any touch of coercion.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind · observation
Kant argues that the moral maxim of universal legislation is an unconditional, a priori rule of practical reason, experienced as a “fact of reason,” determining the will without borrowing anything from experience.
{BOOK*1|CHAPTER*1 ^paragraph 70} REMARK. Pure geometry has postulates which are practical propositions, but contain nothing further than the assumption that we can do something if it is required that we should do it, and these are the only geometrical propositions that concern actual existence. They are, then, practical rules under a problematical condition of the will; but here the rule says: We absolutely must pr…
Kant explains that the basis of moral worth is human “personality,” meaning freedom and independence from nature’s mechanism, and links this to the dignity of humanity as an end in itself under the holy moral law.
that man, as belonging to both worlds, must regard his own nature in reference to its second and highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the highest respect. On this origin are founded many expressions which designate the worth of objects according to moral ideas. The moral law is holy (inviolable). Man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard humanity in his own person as holy. In all creat…
The passage argues that Greek virtue is linked to performing one’s own function well, rooted in citizenship and “nature and history,” and it frames Plato’s critique of shallow accounts of right as grounded in the inner soul.
of constraint. A man’s virtue is to perform his work and to perform it well: to do what he is specially capable of doing, and therefore specially charged to do. Nowhere has this character of Greek ethics received more classical expression than in the Republic of Plato. In the prelude to his subject—which is the nature of Right and Morality—Plato has touched briefly on certain popular and inadequate views. There is t…
He argues that dignity grounds duty and explains morality as relation of actions to a potential universal legislation, culminating in 'autonomy' as the supreme principle and defining duty as objective necessity for obligation.
the rational being himself, be never employed merely as means, but as the supreme condition restricting the use of all means, that is in every case as an end likewise. It follows incontestably that, to whatever laws any rational being may be subject, he being an end in himself must be able to regard himself as also legislating universally in respect of these same laws, since it is just this fitness of his maxims for…