Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
A Universal Law
Topic: Virtue, Morality, & Ethics
“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant argued that the human mind creates the structure of human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of human sensibility, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is independent of humanity's concepts of it. Kant took himself to have effected a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolves around the earth. Kant's beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics.
[From Wikipedia]
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Wilson, Andrew, editor. World Scripture II. Universal Peace Federation, 2011, p. 68 [Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals].
Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
The Golden Rule Chronology
1785 Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals has a footnote objecting to the “trivial” golden rule, that it doesn’t cover duties to oneself or benevolence to others (since many would agree not to be helped by others if they could be excused from helping others) and would force a judge not to punish a criminal. Kant’s objections (which I answer in §14.3c) lowered the golden rule’s credibility for many. Yet Kant’s larger ethical framework is golden-rule like. His “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law” resembles Gold 7 of my §2.3. And his “Treat others as ends in themselves and not just as means” is perhaps well analyzed as “Treat others only as you’re willing to be treated in the same situation.”
–Rev., Dr. Harry Gensler S.J. [The Golden Rule Chronology].