What are the principles for acting morally, according to Kant?
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Kant’s only fundamental principle is the Categorical Imperative: “Act only on maxims that you can will to be universal laws.”
What this amounts to is that you’re supposed to imagine everybody in situations like yours taking actions like yours. If that’s impossible (e.g., “Whenever I meet a stranger, I kill them.” The stranger is also in the situation of meeting a stranger, but one of you is going to die before succeeding in killing the other.) or undesirable (e.g., “While competing at sports, I take performance enhancing drugs.” It *is* possible for all sports competitors to take the drugs, but you won’t be any better off if everyone does it than you would be if no one–including you–did it. Worse off, probably, if the drugs in question are bad for you.), then don’t take the action you’re contemplating.
Kant believes that that principle is the only one you need. The rest of morality can be deduced from it. However, a particularly noteworthy principle that he deduces from it, which he thinks is equivalent to it and thus is also suitable to be used as the sole principle of morality if one wants, is the Practical Imperative: “Always treat humanity as an end in itself, never as a mere means.”
What this amounts to is that you’re not supposed to do things to people without their consent (e.g., rape or slavery), and also not supposed to do things to them that would damage their ability to give or withhold consent to future actions (e.g., homicide, even if consensual). In short, while making decisions, you’re supposed to respect other people’s right to also make decisions.
Kant says: You can’t say something is right just because it gets you what you want. You have to think of a way to describe a basic rule for yourself. And it has to be the sort of thing that if everyone did it, it would be better for everyone.
Kant’s whole message was that everyone should do what kant was doing in that he set up his explanation of his thinking with a process. It’s kinda meta. As in, in teaching others how to think about teaching each other, he was following his idea about making a basic rule. His basic rule was to help other people realize that they need to think their own basic rules.
Rules that take into account things like “how much worth do I give to others?” And “how to tell if you are being good for a reward instead of being good because you value those around you.”
But he also uses the word duty, maybe too much. Because calling on people to recognize that he says they have a duty to stick to his ideas of what people owe one another is really more like wishing that everyone could be better than they are, because no one is ever really as considerate as he wishes they would be.
Did your mom ever ask you, “what if everyone did [that naughty thing you were about to do]?”
That’s Kant in a nutshell.
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