It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.

Some of Kant's particular moral opinions, either because he shared the prejudices of his time, or because of his own personal crotchets, can strike sensible people as ridiculous or offensive. But in my view, his own theory provides us with the resources (the best resources available, I believe) to correct his own personal errors or cultural prejudices.

We are generally forced to choose one way or the other of distancing ourselves from Kant. I suppose I tend to choose the irreligious way. But I regret that Kant's path has not been followed.

Since we cannot know too much about the long term effects of our particular lives, and since success and fame are not good measures of the value of what we have done, it should be enough for any of us that as far as we can tell, in some small way we have made humanity's future better rather than worse.

I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do, and independent of any procedures we might use in making such decisions.

Consequentialist theories pretend that we can set some great big ends (the general happiness, human flourishing), provide ourselves with definite enough conceptions of them to make them the objects of instrumental reasoning, and then obtain enough reliable information about what actions will best promote them that we could regulate our conduct by these considerations alone.

Fichte is concerned with freedom as non-domination.