Usefulness of Kants example of the promise in Contemporary Society Essay

Usefulness of Kants example of the promise in Contemporary Society - Essay Example This is the bases on which Immanuel Kant lays his theory of categorical imperative, which argues that all the people need to put into consideration that a person has the understanding of what it means to say â€Å"I must† as a promise. Through this theory, people are able to make proper distinctions between the different things, which happen in the world because of their understanding of their responsibilities towards each other. Kant argues that the categorical imperative requires a person to know their specific duties in a situation and follow them to accomplish their promises they made. In this respect, he exemplifies all the demands of making promises, which require the person who give them to bear all the responsibilities of fulfilling them according to what they said. In using the categorical imperative, Kant explains how a person can promise to fulfil a promise, which they know they will not fulfil because the basic maxim of a promise is that everyone who promises has to fulfil his or her duty. Arguing like this, it explains why people will not predict that a person is lying to them in making a promise they are not committed to fulfil but which other people think they will honour. This philosophy of Kant was relevant in the past and remains relevant in the contemporary world where people have different engagement to assure others that they will fulfil something and end up not doing it. According to Kant, the issues people have in their minds and which they do normally, form an important part of their explanations to different other things because they get some experience in them. Through these experiences of the mind, individuals form special expectations, which are the outcomes of different things they do in their lives and which other people exploit for their good or for their bad. In this respect, people are caught up in ethical issues, which require them to determine the various things according to the expectations of the society, deviation from which causes a person to be rendered immoral. The things that a person is expected to do in specific situation can be his or her duty and he or she is bound to fulfil it within the stipulated time according to the predetermined social requirement. According to some critics of the theory, there is no clear definition of whether the duty to keep a promise in a situation will be categorized as an ethical, in which a person can do it because they are convinced that it is the best thing to do or legal, where he or she fulfil the promises they have made in fear of the outcome of failure (Byrd and Hruschka, 2006, p49-50). According to Kant, a person bears a duty to talk the truth at the time of making a promise to other people and failure to fulfil them pre-exposes them to lying, which is unethical. This means that according to him, talking the truth in the context of making a promise is ethical and on the other hand, lying in the same context makes a person unethical. He argues that lying violates the duty one h as on himself or herself and therefore, ethical and can only be termed legal if it violates the right of another person who is affected by the lying of the people. For this reason, people who violate the duty of keeping a promise are termed unethical and lacking in moral values, which are unspoken rules that a person holds on himself or herself. Kant discredits lying as a legal duty arguing that all the people have their freedom to say whatever they can say regardless of the different implications they have on the other people in the