Kant's 'Groundwork For The Metaphysics Of Morals'

Jimmy Chung
500 415 174
PHL 710 Philosophy and Film
Second Film Analysis
David Ciavatta
April 17, 2015

In Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant establishes what it means to be moral. Kant in his paper explains the requirements for something to be moral in the following propositions:
But now in order to develop the concept of a good will, to be esteemed in itself and without any further aim, just as it dwells already in the naturally healthy understanding, which does not need to be taught but rather only to be enlightened, this concept always standing over the estimation of the entire worth of our actions and constituting the condition for everything else: we will put before ourselves the concept of
It is clear from the preceding that the aims we may have in actions, and their effects, as ends and incentives of the will, can impart to the actions no unconditioned and moral worth. In what, then, can this worth lie, if it is not supposed to exist in the will, in the relation of the actions to the effect hoped for? It can lie nowhere else than in the principle of the will, without regard to the ends that can be effected through such action; for the will is at a crossroads, as it were, between its principle a priori, which is formal, and its incentive a posteriori, which is material, and since it must somehow be determined by something, it must be determined through the formal principle in general of the volition if it does an action from duty, since every material principle has been withdrawn from it (Kant
Smith sees potential in White, using him as the “muscle” to beat answers out of people. He upholds his sense of justice, seeing every woman abuser as absolutely reprehensible as he takes every opportunity to help any women in need. At the beginning of the film, he beats and handcuffs a man who was having a domestic dispute with his wife. White delivers his own sense of justice to criminals, especially those that have done wrong to women. A very traumatic incident for White was when he was beating Sid Hudgens. Dudley pointed him to the picture of Exley and Bracken. The movie then goes to a rainy scene between White and Bracken where he slaps Bracken across the face for having an affair with Exley. White, for a brief moment, became the epitome of what he hates, a woman abuser. This results in him leaving in sadness and this is verified when Exley speaks to Bracken explaining that White felt terrible for what he did to her. White is an individual that is emotionally driven and this can be seen when he slaps Bracken. Bracken punishes those that do wrong things but he violates his own morals when he decided to slap Bracken. White is another character that is unable to do things completely out of duty and respect for the law, giving into inclinations even going so far as to slap the woman he loves. Though White is unable to uphold the universal morals, the movie shows that he could violate even his