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Full Idea
If there is no original being different from the world, if the world is without a beginning and without an author, if our will is not free and our soul is of the same corruptibility as matter, then moral ideas and principles lose all validity.
Gist of Idea
Without God, creation and free will, morality would be empty
Source
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B496/A468)
Book Ref
Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.499
A Reaction
Atheism or determinism might lead to the collapse of your morality, if you had an amazingly inflated idea of the cosmic importance of human beings behaving well. My view is that morality just concerns important decisions made by healthy persons.
| 168 | To understand morality requires a soul [Plato] |
| 5026 | Animals lack morality because they lack self-reflection [Leibniz] |
| 3954 | Immorality is not in the action, but in the deviation of the will from moral law [Berkeley] |
| 5599 | Without God, creation and free will, morality would be empty [Kant] |
| 21415 | Duty is impossible without prior moral feeling, conscience, love and self-respect [Kant] |
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| 20739 | Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho] |
| 6450 | Morality must be motivating, and not because of pre-moral motives [Nagel] |
| 4284 | All moral life depends ultimately on piety, which is our recognition of our own dependence [Scruton] |