Immanuel Kant's Moral Philsophy and the Place of the Emprical in Ethics

In his eighty year life, Immanuel Kant never ventured outside of his hometown of Königsberg, Germany. Either he was a man who was not inclined to search for things, or he was one who had a groundbreaking perception of how to find them. Kant was, in fact, searching for a great many things. Having begun his career as an astronomer (and having first put forth the theory of galaxies), Kant later delved into moral …

…respect for inherent human dignity is termed by Kant the "Kingdom of Ends". While even Kant recognizes that such a state is more of a moral promised land to which we may all aspire, it is certain that if humanity ever hopes to reach the Kingdom of Ends it must do so with moral thinking that has its "seat and origin completely" in a priori reason, and avoids entirely the pitfalls of contingent, empirical "morality".