Kant and Heidegger on Environmental Ethics: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Immanuel Kant is a German modern philosopher. His contribution to philosophy is that he reconciled rationalism and empiricism. However, Kant believes that human beings are the cause of environmental hazards and not animals directly. Martin Heidegger is a German contemporary philosopher. He is called “the philosopher of Beings”. He is not against science and technology but the abuse that destroy nature. From him, he says: “Let beings be”, The problem is that both Kant and Heidegger accept that human beings are the cause of environmental troubles. Humans are to be warned and they should know that we are only care takers of nature and we should not destroy it so that generations after us will not suffer. Our method is textual analysis. It means a critical look at the original works of Kant and Heidegger and commentaries written on them by other writers to discover the similarities and differences in our authors.