Immanuel Kant...that guy seriously bugs me.
Why?
@Matias Many times in life I've thought something "ought" to be a certain way and it has stubbornly persisted in being otherwise just the same. To me Kant's concept is no different than Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz wishing really hard for home. If wishing made things so I'd still be a theist.
I understand Kant to not be positing that a universal law actually exists, but that it we should behave as if it did. And if we did, we'd all arrive at the same law. I think the whole of human history gives the lie to that one.
@Matias I agree somewhat. I think Kant's main problem had to do with freedom. To be moral one must act as if a free agent, but then Kant says that a person lying to an ax murder is immoral because it compromises one's innate freedom, which is absurd notion almost any way you try to spin it. Kant believed that freedom is something which can't be taken away, he apparently did not agree with the notion that a free agent can be compromised by force.