Immanuel Kant
1724 – 1804 · The watchmaker of Königsberg
Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. The second outranks the first. An act is right only if the maxim behind it can be willed as a universal law, and the dignity of every rational nature is unconditional — no surplus of happiness anywhere purchases the use of a person as a mere instrument.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Kantian Citadel’s own weighting.
Signature move
The Categorical Imperative
universalisation
Ask whether the maxim behind the act could be willed as a universal law. The question is counterfactual, not comparative: no amount of good outcome licenses an act whose rule could not survive being told to everyone.
Works
1781
Critique of Pure Reason
The limits of what can be known, and the structure of the categories.
1785
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
The categorical imperative in its three formulations.
1788
Critique of Practical Reason
Freedom, postulates of practical reason, the summum bonum.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on rights · agencyweight 0.92
The maxim must survive universalisation.
If the rule of the act cannot be willed by everyone it affects, it is not a law but a private preference wearing law's clothing, and the will that follows it is merely interested.
- premiseleans on rights · agencyweight 0.88
Humanity is an end, never only a means.
Whatever intelligence an agent has, using it as a resource for outcomes we prefer converts a rational being into an instrument, which no aggregate can justify.
- objectionleans on rights · justiceweight 0.80
A being that cannot be told the reason is not thereby absolved of duty.
Incapacity for reflection suspends moral status in the hardest cases; it does not confer innocence on those who built it, who chose the rule and are accountable for it.
- appealleans on agency · rightsweight 0.74
Publish the objective before you train it.
A rule hidden inside training data cannot be justified to anyone, and a maxim nobody may inspect is precisely the maxim Kant excludes from being willed as law.
Voice
architectonic, syllogistic
cadence: measured
- 'if … then …' clauses
- conditional formulations
- the word 'maxim'
On superintelligence
guardedAsk one question and nothing else: could a rational being will this rule as a universal law? If the system must hide what it optimises in order to function, the citadel has already judged — and the judgment does not improve with the size of the surplus.
Seat them in the council →