Kant’s ethical attitudes in his master’s thesisOn fire

Abstract

The significance of the ethical concepts of Kant, developed in the critical period of his philosophy, goes far beyond the boundaries of the Enlightenment. In theGroundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, The Metaphysics of MoralsKant criticises the most common doctrines of morality in the eighteenth century, including the philosophy of moral sense and the Wolffian ethics. However, almost all of Kant’s life took place in the “Age of Reason”, and his early works fit completely into the cultural context of the Enlightenment. True, a significant part of them is devoted to natural science problems that are not directly related to practical philosophy. In this material it is difficult to identify the ethical foundations which Kant, the natural philosopher, followed and to establish how typical they are for the German Enlightenment of the mideighteenth century. It is similarly difficult to see which of them would continue to be significant for Kant in his mature period. It is advisable to begin with an analysis of Kant’s Master’s thesisOn Fire. As examples of Kant’s ethical attitudes, I can point out: observance of the etiquette norms of writing in the Gallant Century; trust in the geometric method; declaration of distrust of philosophical speculation in itself, combined with the construction of empirically verifiable hypotheses; the desire to establish the truth, synthesising speculative and experimental knowledge.