Immanuil Kant is a very influential western philosopher whose studies and researches had a great impact on the development of western philosophical thought. It’s hard to meet a person who wouldn’t know the expression Categorical Imperatives which make the basis of the Kant’s teaching. Kant has developed an ethical system of his own mostly presented in his two works - The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Critique of Practical Reason. Search for universal and supreme principle of morality was on the focus of his attention. Finally, the universal moral law (Categorical Imperative) was found as a basic law that can apply to complex and changing situations. Kant defined animal consciousness as purely sensuous and casually determined. This animal consciousness he saw as a part of the empirical world but stated that it differed for humans. That is why human notions of write and wrong couldn’t be applied to this type of consciousness. For example, we don’t judge animals, when they kill other animals for food. The actions of rational beings are defined my moral norms and regulations. These rational being are humans.

So, animals belong to the sensible world and don’t undergo to the set of moral regulations. But the situation with the humans are not this simple. We are rational creatures but being part of the live nature we are also sensible creatures at the same time. This situation discovers the dual nature of our inner regulations as they are shared between two worlds - sensible world and rational one. Are actions are neither mere natural impulse resulting our senses and instincts not the product of our rational thinking and analyzing. They are a combination of both and the extend to with this both influence our motivations is hard to defined and puts us in front of moral choose any time we make the decision to act. So, Kant declared the necessity of the set of rules of conduct and regulations which would give us the opportunity to make the right choice. This ability to choose wh ich looks like freedom from the first site turns to be a hard burden on the shoulder of the mankind as freedom means responsibility and all the animals, who don’t have this choice are “acted by upon by the world” and can’t be responsible for their actions this way. This does not happen to the human and freedom to choose changes passive role to active and implies responsibilities for the choices.

We must investigate our will and reasons to act. Kant states, “Will is the capacity to act according to the principles provided by reason”. But here is the problem of human duality appears. We are not fully rational beings and though partially, but our actions are also defined by the non-rational impulses produced by our sensible (animal) part. But even in the case when the proper analyses is made and will and reasons to act are defined another problem arises. Now we must decided on the way to achieve the result we wish. Kant states that better or worse, actions can be performed to achieve the worse or better result and this puts us in the position of moral dilemma where choosing good for yourself, one can hurt others and vise versa. And the actions we perform after these reflections and considerations are defied as moral actions by Kant. Moral actions for him are the actions, where reasons stay earlier than follows and where we take others into account. It means that we think about the follows of our action for ourselves and others before we perform it. That is the basic feature which distinct us from animals whose actions are built as action – follow chain where the action is taken and any result is taken for granted without doubts and hesitations.

Kant divides everything into two classes of ends-in-themselves and means-to-ends. And if the first class consists of autonomous beings with their own plans of action possessing the free will of choice the second one – the class of means-to-ends doesn’t have this freedom. We, humans, belong to the ends-in-themselves and another class is made of things without sou ls. While taking our decisions and defining our goals and means of actions we should take into account the impact our actions can have on the reasoning agents like ourselves (ends-in-themselves) but can neglect the impact on the means-to-ends.

In his work called “Critique of Practical Reason” tries to investigate the problem of free will and the criteria, which make our actions morally good or bad. Kant finds the solution in using the Categorical Imperative for finding the answer to the question. Categorical Imperative is a notion, which stands beyond the good and evil and possesses the force of duty. The categorical imperative serves to the principles of Universality and Necessity only and it’s a priory form of will. “A priori” is a form, which exists in our consciousness from birth and can not be changed. The intellect operates twelve a priori forms, called categories. Kant stated that a priory forms are empty by their nature and need to be filled in by the empirical elements to become effective. Same as glass itself is a very useful device but can help us to get rid of the thirst only filled in with the water.

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But at the same time Categorical imperative is already defined by itself and empirical elements are defined by it. It’s the Will which helps human to choose good actions but not vice versa. The notion of Categorical Imperatives stands behind the abilities of our comprehension and Kant states that it’s hard to be defined. He names three basic notions through with Categorical Imperatives could be defined. They are namely, liberty and immortality of God and soul. Kant did not deny the existence of God and soul. He only stated that they belonged to the sphere of transcendental and couldn’t be studies or even seen by the organs of perception and mechanisms of thinking peculiar to humans.