Humanity and dignity in Kant

Abstract

Science and technology play a fundamental and irreplaceable place in the construction of the current socio-cultural reality. They are linked to the destiny of human life, and man’s being is marked increasingly by science and depends on it for its enforcement. However, from the significant scientific and technological advancement comes a dilemma that penetrates the core of human socio-cultural reality. Modern man, on the one hand, feels proud to have overcome the pure existential factuality of a lifetime simply inserted into traditional beliefs, assuming, in turn, awareness of his/her self process and a highly streamlined life, but on the other hand, he/she can’t overcome and surpass the historical validity of the normativity of the historical human community in which he/she is inserted. However, realizing that the scientific-technological progress advances rapidly, requiring, therefore, a new spectrum of ethical reasoning action, an unknown dimension to all previous forms of action and reflection, there has been a certain gap between advances in science and technology and the scope of reflection and practice of ethical behavior, especially after the science and technique increased the degree of freedom and autonomy as to be possible to say, after a disenchantment of external nature, now, a kind of a new enchantment with the inner nature. In light of this new socio-cultural environment, there is the purpose of reassembling in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals in the second formulation of the categorical imperative, humanity as an end in order to investigate whether the same on the one hand, can be approximated to understanding the ultimate and final end to the moralization process in the Critique of Judgment, and, on the other hand, if such a formulation may be a reasonable anchorage for contemporary ethical discussion in an eminently scientific spectrum.