What is a simple way of explaining Kantianism? What is it?

Question

What is Kantianism?

Answer 1

He Kant be explained easily.

Answer 2

It may be denoted as "the undermining of Reason."

For all Kant's ranting and ravings (my personal opinion) about "pure reason" etc, he undermined reason by convincing the world that man has "limitations" both in his physical senses, his "animalism,"; and in his mental capacity to comprehend the "real reality" of existence, which he named Noumena.

The opposite of Kantianism is the naturalistic definition of Man as "reasoning," where "reasoning" is defined as capable of overcoming all his liabilities, given time. Man is not omniscient, which is what Kant seems to lament.

But then, I thought we only attributed omniscience to gods, and Reason to Man?

Answer 3

Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term Kantianism or Kantian is still often used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.

Thank Buddha for Wikipedia :D

Answer 4

It's a deontological system of ethics, meaning that it determines right from wrong based on rules rather than on good or bad outcomes.

Kantianism's main premise is that the only good is the good will, and that it is manifested in duty (fulfilling the good will in spite of an inclination to do otherwise).  One of its secondary and probably more quotable premises is that people should be treated as an ends and not a means.  In other words: don't use people; rather, act for them.

I guess the basics of Kantianism also require mentioning the categorical imperative, Kant's calculus for telling right from wrong.  It states that you should always act so that you can will your maxim of action to be a universal law.  In other words, you should act in a way that it would be both possible and good if everybody did that.  "I'm going to be noble and always be the last person out the door during an emergency" violates the CI because of course it's impossible for everyone to do that.  Most selfish actions would also violate it because it would be very bad if everyone were to behave that way.

Answer 5

Here it is in the simplest possible terms:

DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.

From there, Kant's system gets rapidly complex with terminology such as deontological, analytic, synthetic, categorical imperative, a prioti, a posteriori, universalize, maxims, etc.  But don't worry about all of that stuff.