Categorical imperative

“Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.”

“Opinion is steadily inclining towards making the division of labor an imperative rule of conduct, to present it as a duty. ... We no longer think that the exclusive duty of man is to realize in himself the qualities of man in general; but we believe he must have those pertaining to his function. ... The categorical imperative of the moral conscience is assuming the following form: Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.”

“There are moments in life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.”

“Suppose I am considering going to a movie. In the States this now costs approximately $10 (depending on where in the country it is). By the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative I have to consider whether the maxim of spending the money on the movie could be willed by anyone, and in particular by someone whose current role in the situation is as a child in, say, Zambia, who might be receiving the $10, which would be enough to keep her alive for a week.”

“There is ... only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

“The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being.”

“After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution. The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.”

“It turns out that Jesus does not fit the Kantian mold. He is not interested in commending his ethic as though it were for everybody. He is not interested in asking whether everybody can do what he teaches, or whether they will do it, or what would happen if they all did. He just does not ask those questions.”