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Kant's categorical imperative and concept of absolute rule

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Kant would say that we have a duty to never lie. Why does Kant think this? Is he right?
Why? Be sure to discuss Kant's first categorical imperative and concept of absolute rules.

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This post addresses the question of whether Kant was right is saying that we have a duty never to lie, no matter what the anticipated consequence may be.

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The basic aim of Kant in his ethics is to discover universal principles that will be binding on all human beings. Kant was not interested in how people do behave but rather in how they ought to behave. When for instance we make a moral judgment like "we ought to tell the truth", even though people do lie, Kant is interested in knowing how we arrive at such universal rules of behavior. So, for him, the judgment that we ought to tell the truth is similar to the scientific judgment that every change must have a cause. Kant argued that what makes both judgments similar is that they come from reason and not from experience. Kant famously said at the beginning of his Critique of Pure of Reason that although our knowledge begins with experience, they do not arise from it. In other words, experience is what makes the mind to think in universal terms. Reason is what brings to experience universal concepts. It is (theoretical )reason that brings the concept of causality to visible objects in order to explain the process of change not just in a particular case but in all cases. In the ...

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