The Study Of Mioral Self-discipline Of Kant’s Thought

Today, increasingly perfect all kinds of ethics, legal system and political system promote the civilization of human society. But the plight of human beings are far more than ever. The absence of meaning, the emptiness, anxiety become dominant negative state of human life. The conflict of interest is inevitable. People have to hope improvement of the law and social system in order to protect their own interest. However, it is suspicious that social norms can protect the benefit of each person because of so diverse and growing benefit appeal. So, people need to be moral self-discipline except social norms.Self-discipline thought is established by Germany’s classical philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant brought tremendous change to modern western philosophy, and still have far-reaching influence. He criticizes the traditional metaphysics, which lead to set off a "Copernicus revolution" in the field of knowledge. Thus, he set up strict knowledge system(congenital category),which defended the foundation of scientific knowledge. However, Kant did not stop there. The core and basis of Kant’s philosophy is liberty. By discovering the rational "antinomy" and solving it, he established the transcendental freedom. Meanwhile freedom, put in thing-in-itself, can not be recognized. So, he limited knowledge, leave site for freedom. Thus, Kant’s philosophy tuned into practical domain.So, the substantiality of freedom can only be proved in practice. First of all, Kant established the moral law as the supreme principle of moral judgment and moral behavior. Second, he found that self-discipline is supreme principle in moral law. Next, Kant explored the source of moral law further, namely pure practical reason. Only the pure practical reason, he argues, is decided according to the will. Self-discipline means that reason decree for will,in this sense, freedom is self-discipline. Thus, the meaning of Kant’s "Copernican revolution" extended to the field of ethics, which change heteronomy of ethics into self-discipline.The connotation of Kant’s moral self-discipline thinking refers to the ability of human’s rational legislation. People realize the freedom of the material by the ability of legislation, thus Kant treat freedom as self-discipline, or rational freedom. The self-discipline contains some important features. The first characteristic is apriority, which shows a kind of self-determination, exclude natural factors such as experience and feelings. The second characteristic is universally binding, self-discipline means personal standards should accord with the principle of universality, make individual restricted by universality. The third one is the formality, which is the inevitable result of the apriority. The fourth characteristic is purposiveness, which is rational integrity requirements, but the purpose is not comes from experience, but moral.The moral law Kant built only expressed the moral self-discipline. Moral law is only the form of the categorical command, as a kind of "should" requirements. This is different from the natural law of "inevitable". Based on the idea of moral self-discipline, Kant criticizes that idea of freedom of the traditional ethics is not the real freedom in essence. He also criticizes the happiness as the basis of ethics, because this will lead to moral decay. Kant build the principle of rights and the theory of virtue on the basis of moral self-discipline thinking.Nonetheless, in the study of Kant’s ethics, people emphasize the "categorical imperative", while neglecting the thinking of self-discipline. Kant express rational self-discipline as the form of "should", which only shows the restrictive. However, because of excluding experience, it is still unknown how to apply to reality. Kant failed to exclude experience. Self-discipline has positive significance,that is, to promote people’s self-realization. Human behavior is not only mechanical movement in accordance with the laws, on the contrary, human constantly break the existing norms, and establish new norms. This is human ability of legislation. So it is misapprehensive to consider moral law as the internalization of external norms. Moral law is based on self-discipline. Therefore, This is enlightenment significance from Kant’s moral self-discipline to our country.