Quick questions on Kantian ethics: duty, the categorical imperative and the postulates - WJEC A-Level Religious Studies

Kant argued that morality requires us to postulate three things we cannot prove theoretically: freedom (we must be free to be morally responsible), immortality (the soul must survive to allow the perfecting of virtue), and God (who guarantees that virtue and happiness, the "summum bonum", finally coincide). Morality, for Kant, points beyond itself to these postulates.

The sharpest objection to Kantian ethics is the conflict of absolute duties, dramatised by Kant's own example of the murderer at the door: if a killer asks where your friend is hiding, Kant's prohibition on lying seems to require you to tell the truth, with lethal results, which strikes most people as monstrous. The example exposes a genuine weakness, that a system of exceptionless duties has no resources for ranking duties when they collide, since it deliberately refuses to weigh consequences such as the friend's death. Defenders reply that the duty in play can be redescribed (one might remain silent rather than lie, or that there is no duty of honesty towards someone bent on murder), and that the strength of the theory, its refusal to treat persons as mere means, is precisely what protects the friend's dignity in the first place.

What is the only thing Kant says is "good without qualification"? [2 marks]

State the formula of ends in themselves. [2 marks]

Evaluate the view that Kantian ethics provides a sound basis for morality. [20 marks]