History and literature are completely unnecessary to begin thinking about and discovering logical truths about conscience, morality, and human behavior (none of these things are the same thing, despite getting conflated by non-rationalists frequently), but Immanuel Kant is one of the most historically renowned philosophers to posit what is sometimes called moral deontology, or the idea that there are moral obligations that not only exist, but are universally binding, with no individual's circumstances justifying the slightest deviance from obeying these moral laws (not legal customs or personal preferences). At least Kant acknowledged the inherent connection between moral obligations, if they exist, and the nature of God, but although he was opposed to utilitarianism, he wound up embracing it.
To clarify, Kant was a theist rather than someone who seems to have been a direct Christian. If he had been a Christian, some of his positions would conflict with certain aspects of the degrees of evil in various sins. For example, a popular application of Kant's moral framework is that no one should lie to a murderer even when he/she is asking where their next potential victim is. There are two cases of Old Testament figures lying and having done the right thing, but only in the sense of avoiding a greater sin in the process (the Israelite midwives in the book of Exodus who protected male babies and Rahab of Jericho, to be specific). That all lying is immoral does not mean that there is no possible scenario where one will sin regardless of action or inaction or where there is a lesser evil and a more insidious one to be selected. Now, Biblical ethics is in no way utilitarian: it is just that the nuance to degrees of sin and the simultaneous evil of all sin would deviate from Kant's ideas in one sense.
However, his renowned argument for deontological ethics, ironically, is utilitarian at its core! It is true by logical necessity that if something is morally wrong, it is wrong no matter how convenient or beneficial it would be to do otherwise. Evil is that which should not be done. Unless one happens to end up in a situation where, like Jephthah in Judges 11, one will sin no matter what course of action is chosen and the lesser evil is chosen, there is never any excuse for doing something immoral. Kant, for all of his outward sincerity in deontology, argues that one should not perform certain actions (like theft or murder) because society would not be able to function in a stable way if everyone indulged in them. A significant part of his moral philosophy is that a person needs to evaluate what the outcome would be if everyone was to practice the action in consideration. If everyone stole from or murdered others, the entire purpose of doing so might be jeopardized, as there would be no peaceful or just status quo to fall back into and society would be extremely chaotic.
That something would devastate society would not make it evil unless there is a moral obligation, which would be based on the nature of the act itself and not its consequences, and of course there is still the glaring epistemological issue of how people cannot just know what whether morality even exists by introspection. One could know one's moral feelings or preferences through introspection, which is still epistemologically dependent on reason, and one could discover what would logically follow if everyone was to act in a certain way, but neither feelings nor outcomes logically necessitates that something is evil as opposed to just subjectively undesired or objectively harmful. Kant, like every other being with human limitations, could not possibly have known from conscience, a mere set of arbitrary, malleable, subjective emotions that have neither metaphysical nor epistemological connection to any moral obligations that exist, what is or is not morally obligatory, good, neutral, or wrong.
He also leaps into the very utilitarianism he was trying to flee from. While he presents his moral system as if it is about avoiding immoral actions simply because they are immoral, his ethical framework is nothing but repackaged utilitarianism. Kant was a hypocrite who is mistakenly held up as a champion of deontological ethics. It is hardly uncommon for historical philosophers to be understood correctly or for the extent of their stupidity to be recognized, but the masses, if they directly think about philosophy at all, are too stupid or frightened to look right to reason instead of to books, assertions, assumptions, cultural norms, and personal perception in its various forms. Kant, in spite of his hypocrisy that he might not have even realized, is still sometimes revered for his allegedly consistent version of deontology. The contradiction in the very foundation of his moral ideology is seemingly unnoticed by many who obsess over texts, history (though these events and their figures cannot even be proven), and people instead of the laws of logic, but the different sides of Kant's ethical philosophy cannot possible all be true at the same time.
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