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Kant and Kierkegaard For both Kierkegaard and Kant the moral and spiritual center is how I, as a particular, express myself through convention. For both, the structure of pre-established humanity is strikingly similar: freedom, integrity, and trust in (or respect for) an absolute are virtues that define a fully human self, at home in a conventional matrix. To become truly moral, Kant requires that our motives reflect Reasons categorical imperatives. Kierkegaard finds the transcendental locus of unconditional obedience elsewhere, giving the absolute another name. Finally, both Kant and Kierkegaard depict an unsettling tension between normative urgency and epistemic uncertainty. Our salvation hinges on purity of motive construed as a correct relationship to God or Reason.
According to Kierkegaard, individual suffers the most from the fact that others cannot fully understand his essence as intelligent being. It is a cornerstone of existentialist philosophy, which suggests that finding the psychological comfort is only the true purpose of every persons life. It encourages social atomizing, among people, when they are told to be concentrated on their own problems. The self is composed of infinitude and finitude. However, this synthesis is a relation, and a relation that, even though it is derived, relates itself to itself, which is freedom. The self is freedom.
But freedom is the dialectical aspect of the categories of possibility and necessity (Kierkegaard, p. 29). Therefore, we cannot think of existentialism as something that might benefit human kind, as whole It is a philosophy of absurd and frustration, which comes as a result of peoples biological quality being undermined by degenerative political and religious doctrine. Its main fallacy, as philosophical method, is the fact that it strives to establish a comprehensive vision of individuals role in the world, while denying objectivity in principle. This is the main reason why many people rightfully associate existentialism with spiritual depravity. The most prominent existentialist philosophers of the second half of twentieth century were cocaine addicts, which explain why our contemporary understanding of existentialism, as philosophical method, views it as something highly sophisticated, yet negative.
To be trained to keep promises and refrain from cheating is a central part of conventional morality. We are acculturated into taking a number of practices as self-evident, binding duties. But Kant proposes that one could be perfectly trained in this respect and yet express nothing of moral worth. For Kant, ones essential humanity involves acting from a particular stance, from a particular motive. The state of my subjectivity, the purity of my will, is the crucial factor. However praiseworthy my conduct may be from a conventional point of view, without proper motivation it will fail to have moral worth.
An aspiring moral agent must learn to supplement conventionally approved behavior with inward moral virtue, with purity of will. Kant believed that every individual is being psychologically divided between two realms that are essentially opposite the realm of pure ideas and the empirical realm. Therefore, he suggested that it is only logical to conclude that one of those realms is more objective than the other. Individual is ontologically dualistic being, which means that every person is affected by both the idea in itself and physical manifestations of this idea, which are associated with distorted understanding of ideas essence. According to Kant, one of individuals greatest virtues is his ability to stick to the principles that he associates with morality, regardless of external circumstances. We commonly refer to such virtue as sense of duty.
For example, many people do not think of having to get up every morning to go to work as something enjoyable. Nevertheless, they continue with their daily routine on permanent basis, because they rightfully think of it as executing their social duty. If then there is no genuine supreme principle of morality but what must rest simply on pure reason, independent of all experience, I think it is not necessary even to put the question whether it is good to exhibit these concepts in their generality (in abstracto) as they are established a priori along with the principles belonging to them, if our knowledge is to be distinguished from the vulgar and to be called philosophical. (Kant, p. 12) The problem is that, even though most of people agree with the fact that moral imperatives have objective nature, they somehow relate them to existential subjectivity. It is easy to say that the practical application of moral imperatives must be deprived of purely emotional considerations, on our part, however, as practice shows, we usually have problems, when trying to act according to our abstract beliefs. This is because, as human beings, we are not perfect. Bibliography: Kant, Immanuel Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785.
Kierkegaard, Soren The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, 1849.
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