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Articles

Should Kant Be Canceled?

Mark Couch wonders where we should draw the line with historical thinkers.

How should we evaluate controversial thinkers of the past? This issue has been raising many concerns recently. One difficulty is that we are tempted to judge people in the past according to our current views of morality, but this is sometimes problematic, and we need to be careful that people aren’t wrongly canceled.

A good example of this is the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who is esteemed for his fundamental contributions to moral theory, among other things. Indeed, his theory of the Categorical Imperative means that he is generally counted among the greatest moral philosophers of all times.

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