From Moral Law to Human Reality: The Problem of The Origin of Morality in The Context of Feuerbach's Critique of Kant
This study discusses the problem of grounding morality through Immanuel Kant’s practical reason-centered ethics and Ludwig Feuerbach's human-centered (anthropological) approach. Kant grounds the moral law in the unconditional imperative of pure practical reason, and when assigning moral value to an action, he stipulates that it must be performed due to duty; thus, to preserve the autonomy of morality, he excludes inclinations, desires, and social determinants. However, this abstraction has been criticized by his contemporaries and later thinkers on the grounds that it separates moral action from the emotional and social reality of human beings. One of the thinkers who re-examined Kant's moral theory on an anthropological basis is Ludwig Feuerbach, a 19th-century thinker. Feuerbach seeks the source of morality not in pure practical reason, but in the essential nature of human beings and their relationships with others. According to him, morality is not a command directed towards God, but a relationship directed towards humanity. Drawing on Feuerbach's works Zur Ethik: Der Eudämonismus (1869) and Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion (1851), this study discusses the possibility of a new, integrative ethics by analyzing the tension between universal law and human nature.
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