Kant - consistent with secular ideas

• what is secular ethics?

  Ethics based solely on human faculties e.g. reason
• What is Kant’s system based on?

  Enlightenment values of reason and autonomy
• His categorical imperative all suggest what?

  The inherent value of individuals, and the rule of human reason, without reference to religion
• The moral law must be autonomous and not religious for the agent to have a good will
• What does Kant insist that the only thing that is good in itself is?

  The good will
• And the good will is self-evidently a matter of what?

  Volition (free will)
• Kant therefore excludes all consideration of divine command in his ethics, how?

  Because by definition, following a divine command involves accepting the moral will of another authority
• Equally, what does Kant make no appeal to?

  Any text or scripture as an ethical authority
• How can the religious parts of Kant’s theory be abandoned without weakening his ethical approach?

  If moral law and the good will are autonomous, and if moral autonomy is invested in the moral agent, rather than scripture