Kant’s View of Reason and Morality

Immanuel Kant is the founder of modern conception of reason and morality. He can be seen as a representative of the Enlightenment since he believed that through the use of reason and reform of the political and cultural institutions, a society can be perfected. He sympathized with the French Revolution. He believed, as did most Enlightenment thinkers, that the French Revolution would lead to the rise of a liberal, peaceful, and just society not just in France but across Europe. He preached that universal moral principles, which do not depend on the social order, are possible. He valued independence of mind and regarded paternalism as the worst form of tyranny. He thought that reason and universal moral principles were the key to freeing the human mind. He was convinced that there would be perpetual peace among Republican nations founded on rational moral and political principles. But the failure of the French Revolution and the problems that Germany has faced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggest that Kant’s view that a good Republican society can be founded on reason and universal moral principles is not right—social order and principles of morality are the outcome of a historical, cultural, religious process over which men in any generation have limited control.