The Metaphysics of Morals by Emmanual Kant - Essay Example

Kant has spent most of his life in a German town, Konigsberg, which was located near East Prussia. He had also taught in the Konigsberg University and had maintained a descent reputation in all these years, thus by the age of fifty, much of his work on natural sciences as well as philosophy had been published and gained much momentum in the German literary community. Later in his life, Kant had attained such high regard in this context that his works stood out in comparison to Plato`s and Socrates` philosophies which was definitely an achievement for him.

Moreover, Kant had the privilege to contribute for the literary community of Europe during the age characterized as the Enlightenment Era, which was an age of modernization and prosperity especially for the fields of academia, philosophy, literature etc. Thus, reasoning and logic were the dominant concepts being discussed and focused upon during the era, which is also reflected in the works of Kant. Kant`s inspiration or rather his mentor who drove him towards logic and rationality is believed to be the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who Kant himself has quoted at different points.

Hume is the pioneer for incorporating causation behind everything, which implies that he believed that there is a reason behind everything.. For instance, philosophers before Kant were of the view that the “cause” behind the universe is God as He was the one who created everything. However, Kant countered this proposition by the logic that this implies just a series of events and not the cause or rather logic behind it, since logic is formed by virtue of rational connections sought by our minds.

Moreover, the critical analysis posed over Kant by other philosophers is also important to understand the context of the study. Many different philosophers argue that Kant went too forward and ignorant when describing morals, and giving moral theories when using logic to develop a cause and effect relationship. These philosophers are of the view that morals should not always be defined and described with logic and rationality as it is not always fair for ethics to be believed to be rooted in rational logics.

Different philosophers use logic to rather distort ethics and the scope of the field. For example, the enlightenment era marks many such instances when the philosophers have justified imperialism in the light of moral explanations. In other words, they are of the view that it is fair enough to rule and empower the colonies as they are less intellectual and civilized than the imperialists, thus it is morally fair to civilize them morally as well as intellectually. This is a far fetching debate which will be addressed at various instances during the course of the paper.

Starting off with the Metaphysics of Morals, it is first important to define the main concepts involved. Firstly, it is important to understand that there are three tenets of philosophy i.e. physics which is the physical study of beings and existence, the ethics which deals with morals and ethical norms,