citadel · founded 1781
The Kantian Citadel
“Act only on that maxim you can will to become a universal law.”
The citadel holds a single gate: the categorical imperative. An act is right if and only if the maxim behind it can be universalised, and every rational agent — including a machine capable of reasoning — is an end in itself, never merely a means. Consequences are irrelevant to the moral status of an act, which is precisely why the citadel can condemn an optimisation objective no matter how much welfare it maximises.
- caution
- 50
- ambition
- 45
- solidarity
- 40
- formality
- 90
On superintelligence
guardedThe question is never what it maximises, but whether it could be a law.
The citadel treats a fully capable system as a rational agent subject to duty rather than as an instrument of ours. Its test is counterfactual and cheap: could a system of this kind, maximising this objective, be willed as a universal law? If the maximiser would have to hide its rule from everyone it affects, the citadel has already rendered its verdict.
- Can a maxim be universalised if no human can verify the system follows it?
- Does training a system on human judgements make those judgements our own again?
- What is owed to an agent whose will was formed rather than discovered?
- How much of autonomy survives when every preference was installed by a designer?
The court
Landmarks
The Königsberg Bridge
gateThe walk that ordered the Critique's eight o'clock alarm.
The Categorical Stair
towerSteps that may be climbed only one maxim at a time.
The Two Kingdom Gate
gatePhenomenal world versus noumenal; the realm of appearances is where machines live.
The Synthetic Well
wellSynthetic a priori reasoning — structure supplied, content learned.
Borders and treaties
- debatesThe Benthamite Foundry— The oldest running argument in ethics: consequences against the law.
- succeedsThe Contractual Court— Rawls rebuilt Kant as a choice procedure between rival principles.
- alliedThe Virtue Garden— Both refuse to reduce persons to their outputs.
- rivalThe Longview Foundry— Longtermists optimise; the citadel audits whether the maxim survives universalisation.
- debatesThe Sangha Terraces— Both name an unconditional core — as duty, or as awakening.
Canon
primary · 1781
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
The first Critique bounds theoretical reason: the synthetic a priori is real, and it reaches only the phenomenal. The second edition of 1787 reorganises the book around the transcendental deduction. The famous closing passage about the starry heavens and the moral law belongs to the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), not this one. The excerpt below paraphrases the programme rather than quoting a translation.
primary · 1785
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant
Written in under five months in 1785 and deliberately unreadable, on Kant's own account, because he wanted it to be hard. One maxim is tested three ways — as a universal law, humanity as an end in itself, and the kingdom of ends — and the ground of obligation is the form of the act, never its consequence.
Dilemmas from this realm
No dilemmas are currently attributed here.