Kant had a simple test for right and wrong. He called it the categorical imperative. Here’s how it works: before you do something, ask yourself what would happen if everyone did the same thing. Want to lie to get out of trouble? What if everyone lied when it was convenient? Trust would collapse. Society would break down. So lying fails the test. Want to break a promise because something better came up?...
Kant had a radical idea: some things are just wrong. Period. Not wrong because they lead to bad outcomes. Not wrong because they make people unhappy. Wrong because of what they are. Most ethical theories care about results. Utilitarianism says maximize happiness. Hedonism says pursue pleasure. But Kant said forget the consequences. Focus on the action itself. His example: lying is always wrong. Even if lying would save someone’s life, it’s still wrong to lie....
Your culture says eating cows is fine but eating dogs is horrific. Other cultures flip that completely. Who’s right? Moral relativists say nobody. And everybody. Right and wrong aren’t universal truths waiting to be discovered. They’re just what your society decided to value. This sounds reasonable until you push it. If morality is just cultural opinion, then slavery wasn’t actually wrong when societies practiced it. It was just different. Female genital mutilation isn’t wrong in cultures that practice it today....
A runaway trolley speeds toward five people tied to the tracks. You can pull a lever to divert it onto a side track, where it will kill one person instead of five. Do you pull the lever? Most people say yes. Save five lives by sacrificing one. The math seems obvious. But here’s the twist. Same setup, except this time you’re on a bridge above the tracks with a large stranger....