Immanuel Kant
Essays

Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative is a moral rule that holds that decisions should be made on the basis of what we ought to do and on acting in the way we would want to become an absolute rule.

John Stuart Mill was one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. His philosophy of utilitarianism attempted to improve upon Jeremy Bentham's concept that achieving the moral outcome of the 'greatest good…

Deidre McCloskey, the Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). [HB501 M55341 2006 -- Grad]

This paper discusses the philosophical and empirical foundations of influential schools of thought in psychology. It then explains the relevance of these schools to modern psychology. It concludes that the ideas of Behaviorism have been most influential in understanding why human beings, in general, act and react as they do in certain situations but were less effective in explaining the variations in behavior among different individuals. Gestalt psychology illuminated these variations by showing that each individual perceives his environment in a way that make sense to him. Psychoanalysis has been influential in understanding abnormal human behavior and Humanistic psychology for understanding ideal human behavior.

The pursuit of happiness, though not spelled out explicitly until John Locke proposed it as an unalienable right, is likely the oldest and ultimate endeavor of all mankind. All other pursuits can be seen as merely…

Immanuel Kant believed that the categorical imperative was the basis for ethical action in business. The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, which he defined as any proposition that declares a certain action or inaction to be necessary and denotes an absolute, unconditional requirement that "asserts its authority in all circumstances, both required and justified as and end it itself" (Kant 30). In essence, Kant believed that the moral character of an action depends solely on the principle behind it and not upon the consequences it produces, and therefore, ethical obligations are "higher truths" which we must obey regardless of the results (Josephson Institute 1). In viewing this obligation to follow the higher truths that are presented to someone throughout his or her life, the question of ethics and follow-through comes into play.

Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy

Throughout the past years there have been attempts by various religious followers to put forward a proof of God's, this included not only Christian philosophers but also the Jewish and Muslim philosophers, which has led…

¶ … broken down to the question of 'what exactly constitutes knowledge?' This is a question that has plagued philosophers since the beginning of time. Although the majority of the great philosophers seem to equate…

The concept of economic justice has been interpreted and defined a variety of ways by a wide array of theorists. The dominant economic theory of the past, i.e. classical economics, has evolved into what is now…