social political and cultural influences on Kant's ethical theory

pre-enlightenment

• The eighteenth century was a period of philosophy when Natural Law was dominant. Natural Law held that morality derived from the nature of the world and of human beings.
  Human beings had a function, to exercise reason, but they exercised this reason very much in line with the principles of science: they made deductions from observation and proceeded a posteriori (from experience).

the enlightenment

• The Enlightenment (C17th -C18th) was the age of reason.

• Motto "dare to think". So people were taught to think about morality and where it comes from and how to apply it-don't just "do what you're told" or "because God says so (heteronomy) but be autonomous or self-ruled.

• Humans are rational and should use reason to override the animal emotions.

• Kant believed he produced a "Copernican revolution" similar to Newton's in science and Rousseau's in politics: he introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception.

influence of the enlightenment

Kant studied and worked from the basis of Enlightenment figures and carried on the Enlightenment tradition of seeking to replace the traditions and superstitions of religion and monarchy with a worldview that relied primarily on the powers of reason.

He adopts the Enlightenment's rationalisation philosophy, evident in his three Critiques which investigate the scope and powers of reason

rationalism

• Rationalist philosophers - René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

• emphasizes power of reason to answer metaphysical and other questions unaided by experience.

• Though interested in 17th centaury science developments, they place a far greater emphasis than the empiricists did on the potential of the unaided intellect.

empiricism

places a greater emphasis on sensory experience.

2) In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke argues that the human mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, at birth and that all our knowledge comes from experience, either directly or by generalizing from experience.

3) George Berkeley and David Hume add further twists to empiricism, but they remain united in their hostility to the sort of rationalist metaphysics that attempts to unravel the nature of God, causation, time, and space by means of rational argument alone.