utilitarianism and kantian ethics essay

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Utilitarianism

Kantian Ethics vs. Utilitarianism: A Moral Dilemma Explored

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Introduction

In the realm of moral philosophy, two towering giants have long vied for supremacy—Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethics and the consequentialist framework of utilitarianism. As a curious student traversing the intricate pathways of ethical thought, I delve into the dichotomy between Kant and utilitarianism, aiming to unravel the foundations, implications, and conflicts of these contrasting approaches. This essay embarks on a journey through moral principles and ethical calculus, shedding light on the complexities that define the Kant vs. Utilitarianism debate.

Kantian Ethics: Duty and the Categorical Imperative

At the heart of Kantian ethics lies the resolute notion of duty—a moral obligation derived from rational principles rather than outcomes. Immanuel Kant’s framework centers on the concept of the categorical imperative, a universal law that guides ethical decision-making. Kant posits that actions are morally right if they can be willed as a universal law without contradiction. This approach stresses the inherent worth of individuals, advocating that they should be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to an end. Kantian ethics prioritizes the intention behind an action rather than its consequences, emphasizing the importance of moral principles that transcend situational context.

Utilitarianism: The Calculus of Consequences

On contrasting close ethic utilitarianism of spectrum stands, consequentialist doctrine, that estimates the actions based on their results. It is inculcated in philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and later improved by John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism posits, that actions are morally right, if they maximized complete happiness or pleasure. Principle of most happiness for a most number conducts an utilitarian decision making, emphasizing importance of weighing of consequences of operating on prosperity of individuals. The accent of utilitarianism on the measurable and measurable aspects of happiness sets her not to mention about the Kantian accent of ethics’ on peculiar human cost.

Conflict and Ethical Dilemmas

The Kant vs. Utilitarianism debate comes to a head when confronted with ethical dilemmas that pit these two frameworks against each other. Kantian ethics’ unwavering commitment to duty and moral principles can clash with utilitarian calculations that prioritize the greater good. For instance, the classic “trolley problem” presents a scenario where choosing between saving one life and sacrificing one to save many becomes a moral quagmire. Kantian ethics may argue against sacrificing an individual as an end in itself, while utilitarianism may advocate for minimizing overall harm by making a difficult choice.

Implications for Moral Decision-Making

The Kant vs. Utilitarianism discourse reverberates in real-life moral decisions, guiding individuals and policymakers alike. Kantian ethics promotes moral consistency, urging individuals to act according to principles they would want universally applied. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, necessitates evaluating the consequences of actions on the overall well-being of society. The tension between these approaches becomes palpable when navigating ethical questions related to personal integrity, social justice, and collective welfare.

As I, a student seeking illumination in the corridors of ethical philosophy, traverse the terrains of Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, I recognize the gravity of the moral dilemmas these frameworks evoke. The Kant vs. Utilitarianism debate underscores the fundamental clash between principles and consequences, intention and outcome. It serves as a reminder that ethical decisions are rarely clear-cut; they demand rigorous introspection and a nuanced understanding of the values that shape our moral compass.

References to the works of Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill provide a foundational understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. These references illuminate the rich tapestry of thought that informs the Kant vs. Utilitarianism debate, guiding our exploration of the ethical complexities that challenge our moral convictions.

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Utilitarianism Vs. Kantianism: a Moral Philosophical Debate

Categories: Moral Utilitarianism

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Published: Sep 12, 2023

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The foundations of utilitarianism, the tenets of kantianism, key differences and applications, implications and ethical dilemmas, conclusion: bridging the divide.

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Morality: Utilitarianism vs Kantianism

Kantianism, as explained by Immanuel Kant, and Utilitarianism, as explained by John Stuart Mill, represent two different theories for how people ought to act. Kant is primarily concerned with duty. His main idea in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is that an act is in accord with duty and therefore morally permissible if it follows the categorical imperative: “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (14). This rule states that there is a principle (or a maxim as Kant calls it) behind every act, and that if we cannot universalize this principle, then the act is contrary to duty, and therefore not morally permissible. Mill’s basic idea in Utilitarianism (1861), on the other hand, focuses on utility to guide one’s moral decisions, not duty. To figure out what we ought to do, Mill asks us to always consider the greatest happiness principle, which he states as follows: “…actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (7). Mill quantifies every action by how much happiness and/or suffering it produces, and tells us that to be moral is to pick those actions that most “tend to” promote happiness and least “tend to” promote suffering. I find Kant’s moral theory worthier of adoption because, in those issues for which the two theories tell us we ought to act differently, I find it more comfortable given my existing moral beliefs [1] to do as Kant would instruct than to do what Mill would instruct. In those rare scenarios in which I admit I am more comfortable with the utilitarian understanding, these are bullets I am able to bite; I find, however, that the bullets that a utilitarian must bite are much worse—at least as measured by what I am comfortable with.

To preface what will eventually be my rebuke of Mill, I feel I must first give it a fair exposition. As previously mentioned, Mill asks us to consider with every moral decision which of our options would tend to promote the most happiness and/or the least suffering, and to do as that option dictates. This theory has been split for the purpose of discourse; first is the Theory of the Right or the consequentialist view that acts are right in in proportion as they tend to promote good; next is the Theory of the Good or the Hedonistic view that the only thing good in itself is happiness and the absence of suffering. Having split the principle into two though, we can begin to look at objections to each part. One objection to the Theory of the Good is that there is more good than just pleasure and absence of suffering; there is also meaning, purpose, love, pride, sympathy, achievement, etc. To this, Mill responds that “it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others” (7). In other words, Mill asserts that all of these feelings (love, purpose, achievement, etc.) are pleasure, and that there is no law of utilitarianism that dictates all pleasures equal; in other words, there can be higher and lower quality pleasures within utilitarianism. Higher quality pleasures can outweigh higher quantities of lower quality pleasures, and this is all consistent with utilitarianism.

There are two main objections to the Theory of the Right that Mill talks about. The first is that there are things that are right which do not tend to promote happiness and that there are things which tend to promote happiness but aren’t right. An example of this may be to lie to get out of trouble. Mill, however, argues that utilitarianism doesn’t permit this lying to get out of trouble because the lying leads to the dissolution of the concept of trust, which we need in our society to produce the most happiness and least suffering. Even if you will likely get away with lying, the consequences if you don’t (the dissolution of trust) are much worse for total happiness than the amount by which getting away with lying could be good for the total happiness. The second objection to the Theory of the Right is that there are acts that are just but don’t produce happiness and that there are unjust practices that do. To this, Mill must tackle the idea of justice and in doing so, he defines just acts as merely a subset of acts that promote happiness. He claims this subset of happiness-producing acts, the “just” subset, is defined by the opposite action infringing on someone’s rights. These rights whose infringement would be unjust are moral rights, the right to get what you deserve, the right to be judged impartially, and the right to have your promises kept. When acts preserve these rights when their opposite acts would infringe, they are just, but justness is but an adjective to describe this one subset of happiness-promoting acts. We have now explained Mill simply by paraphrasing. We will get to the real downsides of being utilitarian later in this essay, after we have given the same paraphrasing to Kant’s work.

As to not complicate Kant’s work in the context of comparing it with Mill’s, [2] I am going to focus on Kant’s test for moral permissibility: the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative, as stated in the introduction, stipulates that the principal upon which we act has to be universalizable in order for the act to be morally permissible (in Kant’s words, “in accord with duty”). Testing whether an act’s principle is universalizable has three basic steps:

Find the principle.
Universalize the principle.
Test whether it can hold as a natural, universal law.

This third step, the test, comes with two ways to fail it, both by contradiction. First, there is the contradiction where the very idea of the principle holding as universal law would be impossible. Take the making of false promises for our own gain as an example:

The principle is that we can make false promises for our own gain.
Everybody always makes false promises for their own gain.
There is a contradiction in this universalization because, if everybody always made promises for their own gain, then nobody would make promises. The idea that nobody makes promises contradicts with #2 since #2 stipulates that everybody is making promises.

The second possible contradiction is in our willing that the act become a universal law. This isn’t a contradiction between #3 and #2 (as you will see), but rather a contradiction between #2 and my will—I would not commit this act if its principle were going to be universalized. Take never helping anybody else as an example:

The principle is that I won’t help others.
Nobody will ever help others.
There is no problem with the existence of this law in terms of literal possibility, but this world would be an extremely unforgiving, inhumane place to live. Furthermore, nobody would help me if I were in need, and I therefore would not be able to will that my principle become universal law.

If my act’s principle can become universal law while avoiding enacting an impossible scenario (#3 contradicts #2, the first contradiction), and avoiding creating a situation I would not be able to will (#2 contradicts my will), then the action is morally permissible according to Kant.

Next, I will draw on some scenarios to explain where the two moral theories might disagree with each other. This will help to understand the applications of the two theories and will allow me to explain why I side with Kant over Mill. The first scenario we will call the Righteous Burglar. In this scenario, there is a metropolis with a large income distribution. There are many millionaires in this city, even billionaires, and also extremely poor people, some of which are quite special and could really do a lot of good for the world if only they had the money to escape poverty. In this metropolis, there is a burglar who is known for stealing money from vaults contained in the considerably rich people’s homes. His theft is not very emotionally damaging; he doesn’t take any sentimental possessions, but rather he cleanly extracts an amount of money that is essentially negligible to the very rich (say he takes $50,000 from a billionaire), and he gives it to some of the brightest and genuinely kind poor people in the city, say 5 of them. The poor people given the money tend to decide to do decent things with their money: they spend it on their families, they start local businesses that employ people, some of them even start charities. The billionaires, not very affected by their loss, tend to spend a little more money on security and otherwise go on with their lives. The burglaries are clean extractions anyway, and nobody is really traumatized. How should we think of the Righteous Burglar? Mill would ask us to evaluate his actions as they promote happiness and avoid suffering. Before the Righteous Burglar operated, many of the poor were suffering; now they are happy. The billionaire stolen from was whatever level of happy he was, and now he is only slightly less happy. The amount of happiness caused was great, the amount of suffering caused was minimal. According to utilitarianism, then, the Righteous Burglar does something morally good. Now, I will perform the Kant test as well on this scenario:

The principle is that someone may steal from the rich to give to the poor.
Everybody always steals from the rich to give to the poor.
There is a contradiction in this universalization because if everybody were to always steal from the rich and give to the poor, there would be no rich to steal from, or no poor to give to (I’m not sure which would happen first). This is a contradiction with #2 since #2 requires that there be rich people to steal from and poor people to give to. The very idea of this holding as a universal law is impossible, and therefore there is a contradiction.

In the eyes of Mill, the Righteous Burglar is good, and in the eyes of Kant, he is bad. This is what I believe to be the major bullet that supporters of Kant must bite. Even things that would make many people very happy cannot be accomplished so long as their principle could not be replicated universally, which is admittedly a high standard for acts.

Now, I will demonstrate the bullet utilitarians must bite. This situation I will call The Surgeon and the Loner. [3] In this scenario, I am a successful surgeon quite talented at performing organ transplants. I have two patients that need kidneys, two that need lungs, and one that needs a heart. They all are going to die in the next few weeks if they do not have the organ transplants they need, and I have no willing donors. Moreover, [4] all five patients are innovators in the field of cancer research. They collaborate with each other frequently, and they are nearing a cure for cancer, but they think it’ll still be another year until they are able to fully discover the cure and publish their results. I also have a 6 th patient. This 6 th patient does no work for the world, and nobody at all loves or cares about him. He rummages through the dumpsters every day to find food, and he survives, but not only does it seem he will never escape intense poverty, but nobody cares if he does. He is also quite selfish and dumb; his presence does not bring happiness to the world (other than his own) and it shows no sign of ever doing so. He is an illegal immigrant and is therefore not contained in any government database, and he only shows himself at night. I only know him because I am a night owl and stumbled upon him during a 3am jog and offered him my services. Am I allowed to harvest his organs, killing him in the process, for the sake of the five do-gooders? A utilitarian would be forced to say yes, as his suffering is very small compared to the happiness of the five cancer researchers, everybody they know and love, and the millions of lives they’ll soon save. But a supporter of Kant would say no:

The principle is that I can kill to save people deemed more happiness-producing for society.
Everyone will always kill to save people deemed more happiness-producing for society.
While this world is possible, it seems like quite a horrible one. At any time, anyone who is not the most happiness-producing person in the world could be murdered. This world would not have interaction beyond what is necessary to survive, as everyone would be too afraid of being killed on the basis of one’s unsuccessfulness at producing happiness. There is therefore a contradiction in my willing that this become a universal law.

This scenario explains why I would support Kant over Mill. At worst, a world where people follow the categorical imperative is one where people are too principled and afraid to make exceptions to rules even when these exceptions might do good for society. Sometimes this lack of flexibility may cause people pain, and that is unfortunate. However, this doesn’t compare to the shortcomings of a world where people are utilitarian. In a utilitarian world, one is always subject to being evaluated on how much happiness they produce, and anything that you have, at any time, (even your life itself) can and should be sacrificed for the greatest total happiness. Any sort of selfishness or favoritism ever is immoral, even if that means buying my mother a nice present instead of donating the money for that gift to charity, or just acquiring nice things of any kind, or simply living near people that need organs and happen to be better people at producing happiness. I think even worse though, is not just what Mill would define as immoral, but what he would define as moral—anything that promotes happiness more than it promotes suffering. If someone would like your dinner more than you would, they can and should steal it. If your small amount of wealth (say you’re a laborer) could save the lives of several starving children, stealing it would be not just allowed, but encouraged. And most damningly, if your body itself could save people who in total produce more happiness than you, than your life itself could be stolen, and should be stolen, so long as these actions are not caught and therefore can’t have a detrimental effect on the normal amount of happiness in the world (through the dissolution of trust, for example). These are bullets I would not bite.

[1] I realize this may be unsatisfying. In a paper of this length, I would find it quite challenging to examine and even problematize the issue of my own views of morality. I wish I had the chance to examine them and explain to the reader why I hold these views, and why I see that these views are correct, but unfortunately this issue is out of the scope of this paper. I have no choice to rely on what I already believe to be moral, which may seem intellectually lazy, but I would say it is more intellectually inexpedient.

[2] This is to say we will not be worrying about Kant’s theory of value. This is the theory that morally praises actions if they are only motivated by duty. Though some essays comparing Mill to Kant may include this, it is in my opinion that we should centrally focus on the comparison between Mill’s greatest happiness principle and Kant’s categorical imperative. A longer essay could deal with Kant’s theory of value in more detail than this footnote, and could maybe even compare it to Mill.

[3] This is based on a scenario described in Thomson’s “The Trolley Problem” but it is not the exact same scenario. I have added some details to make it so that a utilitarian is forced into one of the options, rather than really being able to choose both and fit them to utilitarianism.

[4] This is my addition.

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Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a principle of practical rationality that he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Kant characterized the CI as an objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must follow despite any natural desires we may have to the contrary. All specific moral requirements, according to Kant, are justified by this principle, which means that all immoral actions are irrational because they violate the CI. Other philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards were either instrumental principles of rationality for satisfying one’s desires, as in Hobbes, or external rational principles that are discoverable by reason, as in Locke and Aquinas. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason reveals the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he also argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle), and hence to moral requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free, in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect.

Kant’s most influential positions in moral philosophy are found in The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter, “ Groundwork ”) but he developed, enriched, and in some cases modified those views in later works such as The Critique of Practical Reason , The Metaphysics of Morals , Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason as well as his essays on history and related topics. Kant’s Lectures on Ethics , which were lecture notes taken by three of his students on the courses he gave in moral philosophy, also include relevant material for understanding his views. We will mainly focus on the foundational doctrines of the Groundwork , even though in recent years some scholars have become dissatisfied with this standard approach to Kant’s views and have turned their attention to the later works. We find the standard approach most illuminating, though we will highlight important positions from the later works where needed.

1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy

2. good will, moral worth and duty, 3. duty and respect for moral law, 4. categorical and hypothetical imperatives, 5. the formula of the universal law of nature, 6. the humanity formula, 7. the autonomy formula, 8. the kingdom of ends formula, 9. the unity of the formulas, 10. autonomy, 11. non-rational beings and disabled humans, 12. virtue and vice, 13. normative ethical theory, 14. teleology or deontology, 15. metaethics, other internet resources, related entries.

The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork , is, in Kant’s view, to “seek out” the foundational principle of a “metaphysics of morals,” which Kant understands as a system of a priori moral principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures. Kant pursues this project through the first two chapters of the Groundwork . He proceeds by analyzing and elucidating commonsense ideas about morality, including the ideas of a “good will” and “duty”. The point of this first project is to come up with a precise statement of the principle or principles on which all of our ordinary moral judgments are based. The judgments in question are supposed to be those that any normal, sane, adult human being would accept on due rational reflection. Nowadays, however, many would regard Kant as being overly optimistic about the depth and extent of moral agreement. Perhaps he is best thought of as drawing on a moral viewpoint that is very widely shared and which contains some general judgments that are very deeply held. In any case, he does not appear to take himself to be primarily addressing a genuine moral skeptic such as those who often populate the works of moral philosophers, that is, someone who doubts that she has any reason to act morally and whose moral behavior hinges on a rational proof that philosophers might try to give. For instance, when, in the third and final chapter of the Groundwork , Kant takes up his second fundamental aim, to “establish” this foundational moral principle as a demand of each person’s own rational will, his conclusion apparently falls short of answering those who want a proof that we really are bound by moral requirements. He rests this second project on the position that we — or at least creatures with rational wills — possess autonomy. The argument of this second project does often appear to try to reach out to a metaphysical fact about our wills. This has led some readers to the conclusion that he is, after all, trying to justify moral requirements by appealing to a fact — our autonomy — that even a moral skeptic would have to recognize.

Kant’s analysis of the common moral concepts of “duty” and “good will” led him to believe that we are free and autonomous as long as morality, itself, is not an illusion. Yet in the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant also tried to show that every event has a cause. Kant recognized that there seems to be a deep tension between these two claims: If causal determinism is true then, it seems, we cannot have the kind of freedom that morality presupposes, which is “a kind of causality” that “can be active, independently of alien causes determining it” (G 4:446).

Kant thought that the only way to resolve this apparent conflict is to distinguish between phenomena , which is what we know through experience, and noumena , which we can consistently think but not know through experience. Our knowledge and understanding of the empirical world, Kant argued, can only arise within the limits of our perceptual and cognitive powers. We should not assume, however, that we know all that may be true about “things in themselves,” although we lack the “intellectual intuition” that would be needed to learn about such things.

These distinctions, according to Kant, allow us to resolve the “antinomy” about free will by interpreting the “thesis” that free will is possible as about noumena and the “antithesis” that every event has a cause as about phenomena. Morality thus presupposes that agents, in an incomprehensible “intelligible world,” are able to make things happen by their own free choices in a “sensible world” in which causal determinism is true.

Many of Kant’s commentators, who are skeptical about these apparently exorbitant metaphysical claims, have attempted to make sense of his discussions of the intelligible and sensible worlds in less metaphysically demanding ways. On one interpretation (Hudson 1994), one and the same act can be described in wholly physical terms (as an appearance) and also in irreducibly mental terms (as a thing in itself). On this compatibilist picture, all acts are causally determined, but a free act is one that can be described as determined by irreducibly mental causes, and in particular by the causality of reason. A second interpretation holds that the intelligible and sensible worlds are used as metaphors for two ways of conceiving of one and the same world (Korsgaard 1996; Allison 1990; Hill 1989a, 1989b). When we are engaging in scientific or empirical investigations, we often take up a perspective in which we think of things as subject to natural causation, but when we deliberate, act, reason and judge, we often take up a different perspective, in which we think of ourselves and others as agents who are not determined by natural causes. When we take up this latter, practical, standpoint, we need not believe that we or others really are free, in any deep metaphysical sense; we need only operate “under the idea of freedom” (G 4:448). Controversy persists, however, about whether Kant’s conception of freedom requires a “two worlds” or “two perspectives” account of the sensible and intelligible worlds (Guyer 1987, 2009; Langton 2001; Kohl 2016; Wood 1984; Hogan 2009).

Although the two most basic aims Kant saw for moral philosophy are to seek out and establish the supreme principle of morality, they are not, in Kant’s view, its only aims. Moral philosophy, for Kant, is most fundamentally addressed to the first-person, deliberative question, “What ought I to do?”, and an answer to that question requires much more than delivering or justifying the fundamental principle of morality. We also need some account, based on this principle, of the nature and extent of the specific moral duties that apply to us. To this end, Kant employs his findings from the Groundwork in The Metaphysics of Morals , and offers a categorization of our basic moral duties to ourselves and others. In addition, Kant thought that moral philosophy should characterize and explain the demands that morality makes on human psychology and forms of human social interaction. These topics, among others, are addressed in central chapters of the second Critique , the Religion and again in the Metaphysics of Morals, and are perhaps given a sustained treatment in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View . Further, a satisfying answer to the question of what one ought to do would have to take into account any political and religious requirements there are. Each of these requirement turn out to be, indirectly at least, also moral obligations for Kant, and are discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals and in Religion . Finally, moral philosophy should say something about the ultimate end of human endeavor, the Highest Good, and its relationship to the moral life. In the Critique of Practical Reason , Kant argued that this Highest Good for humanity is complete moral virtue together with complete happiness, the former being the condition of our deserving the latter. Unfortunately, Kant noted, virtue does not ensure wellbeing and may even conflict with it. Further, he thought that there is no real possibility of moral perfection in this life and indeed few of us fully deserve the happiness we are lucky enough to enjoy. Reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of Divine Providence, on Kant’s view, nor the immortality of the soul, which seem necessary to rectify these things. Nevertheless, Kant argued, an unlimited amount of time to perfect ourselves (immortality) and a commensurate achievement of wellbeing (ensured by God) are “postulates” required by reason when employed in moral matters.

Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral philosophy should employ when pursuing these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that the fundamental philosophical issues of morality must be addressed a priori , that is, without drawing on observations of human beings and their behavior. Kant’s insistence on an a priori method to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles, however, does not always appear to be matched by his own practice. The Metaphysics of Morals , for instance, is meant to be based on a priori rational principles, but many of the specific duties that Kant describes, along with some of the arguments he gives in support of them, rely on general facts about human beings and our circumstances that are known from experience.

In one sense, it might seem obvious why Kant insists on an a priori method. A “metaphysics of morals” would be, more or less, an account of the nature and structure of moral requirements — in effect, a categorization of duties and values. Such a project would address such questions as, What is a duty? What kinds of duties are there? What is the good? What kinds of goods are there?, and so on. These appear to be metaphysical questions. Any principle used to provide such categorizations appears to be a principle of metaphysics, in a sense, but Kant did not see them as external moral truths that exist independently of rational agents. Moral requirements, instead, are rational principles that tell us what we have overriding reason to do. Metaphysical principles of this sort are always sought out and established by a priori methods.

Perhaps something like this was behind Kant’s thinking. However, the considerations he offers for an a priori method do not all obviously draw on this sort of rationale. The following are three considerations favoring a priori methods that he emphasizes repeatedly.

The first is that, as Kant and others have conceived of it, ethics initially requires an analysis of our moral concepts. We must understand the concepts of a “good will”, “obligation”, “duty” and so on, as well as their logical relationships to one another, before we can determine whether our use of these concepts is justified. Given that the analysis of concepts is an a priori matter, to the degree that ethics consists of such an analysis, ethics is a priori as a well.

Of course, even were we to agree with Kant that ethics should begin with analysis, and that analysis is or should be an entirely a priori undertaking, this would not explain why all of the fundamental questions of moral philosophy must be pursued a priori . Indeed, one of the most important projects of moral philosophy, for Kant, is to show that we, as rational agents, are bound by moral requirements and that fully rational agents would necessarily comply with them. Kant admits that his analytical arguments for the CI are inadequate on their own because the most they can show is that the CI is the supreme principle of morality if there is such a principle . Kant must therefore address the possibility that morality itself is an illusion by showing that the CI really is an unconditional requirement of reason that applies to us. Even though Kant thought that this project of “establishing” the CI must also be carried out a priori , he did not think we could pursue this project simply by analyzing our moral concepts or examining the actual behavior of others. What is needed, instead, is a “synthetic”, but still a priori , kind of argument that starts from ideas of freedom and rational agency and critically examines the nature and limits of these capacities.

This is the second reason Kant held that fundamental issues in ethics must be addressed with an a priori method: The ultimate subject matter of ethics is the nature and content of the principles that necessarily determine a rational will.

Fundamental issues in moral philosophy must also be settled a priori because of the nature of moral requirements themselves, or so Kant thought. This is a third reason he gives for an a priori method, and it appears to have been of great importance to Kant: Moral requirements present themselves as being unconditionally necessary . But an a posteriori method seems ill-suited to discovering and establishing what we must do whether we feel like doing it or not; surely such a method could only tell us what we actually do. So an a posteriori method of seeking out and establishing the principle that generates such requirements will not support the presentation of moral “oughts” as unconditional necessities. Kant argued that empirical observations could only deliver conclusions about, for instance, the relative advantages of moral behavior in various circumstances or how pleasing it might be in our own eyes or the eyes of others. Such findings clearly would not support the unconditional necessity of moral requirements. To appeal to a posteriori considerations would thus result in a tainted conception of moral requirements. It would view them as demands for which compliance is not unconditionally necessary, but rather necessary only if additional considerations show it to be advantageous, optimific or in some other way felicitous. Thus, Kant argued that if moral philosophy is to guard against undermining the unconditional necessity of obligation in its analysis and defense of moral thought, it must be carried out entirely a priori .

Kant’s analysis of commonsense ideas begins with the thought that the only thing good without qualification is a “good will”. While the phrases “he’s good hearted”, “she’s good natured” and “she means well” are common, “the good will” as Kant thinks of it is not the same as any of these ordinary notions. The idea of a good will is closer to the idea of a “good person”, or, more archaically, a “person of good will”. This use of the term “will” early on in analyzing ordinary moral thought prefigures later and more technical discussions concerning the nature of rational agency. Nevertheless, this idea of a good will is an important commonsense touchstone to which Kant returns throughout his works. The basic idea, as Kant describes it in the Groundwork, is that what makes a good person good is his possession of a will that is in a certain way “determined” by, or makes its decisions on the basis of, whatever basic moral principles there may be. The idea of a good will is supposed to be the idea of one who is committed only to make decisions that she holds to be morally worthy and who takes moral considerations in themselves to be conclusive reasons for guiding her behavior. This sort of disposition or character is something we all highly value, Kant thought. He believes we value it without limitation or qualification. By this, we believe, he means primarily two things.

First, unlike anything else, there is no conceivable circumstance in which we regard our own moral goodness as worth forfeiting simply in order to obtain some desirable object. By contrast, the value of all other desirable qualities, such as courage or cleverness, can be diminished, forgone, or sacrificed under certain circumstances: Courage may be laid aside if it requires injustice, and it is better not to be witty if it requires cruelty. There is no implicit restriction or qualification to the effect that a commitment to give moral considerations decisive weight is worth honoring, but only under such and such circumstances .

Second, possessing and maintaining a steadfast commitment to moral principles is the very condition under which anything else is worth having or pursuing. Intelligence and even pleasure are worth having only on the condition that they do not require giving up one’s fundamental moral convictions. The value of a good will thus cannot be that it secures certain valuable ends, whether of our own or of others, since their value is entirely conditional on our possessing and maintaining a good will. Indeed, since a good will is good under any condition, its goodness must not depend on any particular conditions obtaining. Thus, Kant points out that a good will must then also be good in itself and not in virtue of its relationship to other things such as the agent’s own happiness, overall welfare or any other effects it may or may not produce A good will would still “shine like a jewel” even if it were “completely powerless to carry out its aims” (G 4:394).

In Kant’s terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or, as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings inevitably feel this Law as a constraint on their natural desires, which is why such Laws, as applied to human beings, are imperatives and duties. A human will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty . A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty because such a will does not have natural inclinations and so necessarily fulfills moral requirements without feeling constrained to do so. It is the presence of desires that could operate independently of moral demands that makes goodness in human beings a constraint, an essential element of the idea of “duty.” So in analyzing unqualified goodness as it occurs in imperfectly rational creatures such as ourselves, we are investigating the idea of being motivated by the thought that we are constrained to act in certain ways that we might not want to simply from the thought that we are morally required to do so.

Kant confirms this by comparing motivation by duty with other sorts of motives, in particular, with motives of self-interest, self-preservation, sympathy and happiness. He argues that a dutiful action from any of these motives, however praiseworthy it may be, does not express a good will. Assuming an action has moral worth only if it expresses a good will, such actions have no genuine “moral worth.” The conformity of one’s action to duty in such cases is only related by accident to morality. For instance, if one is motivated by happiness alone, then had conditions not conspired to align one’s duty with one’s own happiness one would not have done one’s duty. By contrast, were one to supplant any of these motivations with the motive of duty, the morality of the action would then express one’s determination to act dutifully out of respect for the moral law itself. Only then would the action have moral worth.

Kant’s views in this regard have understandably been the subject of much controversy. Many object that we do not think better of actions done for the sake of duty than actions performed out of emotional concern or sympathy for others, especially those things we do for friends and family. Worse, moral worth appears to require not only that one’s actions be motivated by duty, but also that no other motives, even love or friendship, cooperate. Yet Kant’s defenders have argued that his point is not that we do not admire or praise motivating concerns other than duty, only that from the point of view of someone deliberating about what to do, these concerns are not decisive in the way that considerations of moral duty are. What is crucial in actions that express a good will is that in conforming to duty a perfectly virtuous person always would, and so ideally we should, recognize and be moved by the thought that our conformity is morally obligatory. The motivational structure of the agent should be arranged so that she always treats considerations of duty as sufficient reasons for conforming to those requirements. In other words, we should have a firm commitment not to perform an action if it is morally forbidden and to perform an action if it is morally required. Having a good will, in this sense, is compatible with having feelings and emotions of various kinds, and even with aiming to cultivate some of them in order to counteract desires and inclinations that tempt us to immorality. Controversy persists, however, about whether Kant’s claims about the motive of duty go beyond this basic point (Timmermann 2007; Herman 1993; Wood 1998; Baron 1995).

Suppose for the sake of argument we agree with Kant. We now need to know what distinguishes the principle that lays down our duties from these other motivating principles, and so makes motivation by it the source of unqualified value.

According to Kant, what is singular about motivation by duty is that it consists of bare respect for the moral law. What naturally comes to mind is this: Duties are rules or laws of some sort combined with some sort of felt constraint or incentive on our choices, whether from external coercion by others or from our own powers of reason. For instance, the bylaws of a club lay down duties for its officers and enforce them with sanctions. City and state laws establish the duties of citizens and enforce them with coercive legal power. Thus, if we do something because it is our “civic” duty, or our duty “as a boy scout” or “a good American,” our motivation is respect for the code that makes it our duty. Thinking we are duty bound is simply respecting, as such, certain laws pertaining to us.

However intuitive, this cannot be all of Kant’s meaning. For one thing, as with the Jim Crow laws of the old South and the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany, the laws to which these types of “actions from duty” conform may be morally despicable. Respect for such laws could hardly be thought valuable. For another, our motive in conforming our actions to civic and other laws is rarely unconditional respect. We also have an eye toward doing our part in maintaining civil or social order, toward punishments or loss of standing and reputation in violating such laws, and other outcomes of lawful behavior. Indeed, we respect these laws to the degree, but only to the degree, that they do not violate values, laws or principles we hold more dear. Yet Kant thinks that, in acting from duty, we are not at all motivated by a prospective outcome or some other extrinsic feature of our conduct except insofar as these are requirements of duty itself. We are motivated by the mere conformity of our will to law as such.

To act out of respect for the moral law, in Kant’s view, is to be moved to act by a recognition that the moral law is a supremely authoritative standard that binds us and to experience a kind of feeling, which is akin to awe and fear, when we acknowledge the moral law as the source of moral requirements. Human persons inevitably have respect for the moral law even though we are not always moved by it and even though we do not always comply with the moral standards that we nonetheless recognize as authoritative.

Kant’s account of the content of moral requirements and the nature of moral reasoning is based on his analysis of the unique force moral considerations have as reasons to act. The force of moral requirements as reasons is that we cannot ignore them no matter how circumstances might conspire against any other consideration. Basic moral requirements retain their reason-giving force under any circumstance, they have universal validity. So, whatever else may be said of basic moral requirements, their content is universal. Only a universal law could be the content of a requirement that has the reason-giving force of morality. This brings Kant to a preliminary formulation of the CI: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (G 4:402). This is the principle which motivates a good will, and which Kant holds to be the fundamental principle of all of morality.

Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative . It is an imperative because it is a command addressed to agents who could follow it but might not (e.g. , “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”). It is categorical in virtue of applying to us unconditionally, or simply because we possesses rational wills, without reference to any ends that we might or might not have. It does not, in other words, apply to us on the condition that we have antecedently adopted some goal for ourselves.

There are “oughts” other than our moral duties, according to Kant, but these oughts are distinguished from the moral ought in being based on a quite different kind of principle, one that is the source of hypothetical imperatives . A hypothetical imperative is a command that also applies to us in virtue of our having a rational will, but not simply in virtue of this. It requires us to exercise our wills in a certain way given we have antecedently willed an end. A hypothetical imperative is thus a command in a conditional form. But not any command in this form counts as a hypothetical imperative in Kant’s sense. For instance, “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” is a conditional command. But the antecedent conditions under which the command “clap your hands” applies to you do not posit any end that you will, but consist rather of emotional and cognitive states you may or may not be in. Further, “if you want pastrami, try the corner deli” is also a command in conditional form, but strictly speaking it too fails to be a hypothetical imperative in Kant’s sense since this command does not apply to us in virtue of our willing some end, but only in virtue of our desiring or wanting an end. For Kant, willing an end involves more than desiring; it requires actively choosing or committing to the end rather than merely finding oneself with a passive desire for it. Further, there is nothing irrational in failing to will means to what one desires. An imperative that applied to us in virtue of our desiring some end would thus not be a hypothetical imperative of practical rationality in Kant’s sense.

The condition under which a hypothetical imperative applies to us, then, is that we will some end. Now, for the most part, the ends we will we might not have willed, and some ends that we do not will we might nevertheless have willed. But there is at least conceptual room for the idea of a natural or inclination-based end that we must will. The distinction between ends that we might or might not will and those, if any, we necessarily will as the kinds of natural beings we are, is the basis for his distinction between two kinds of hypothetical imperatives. Kant names these “problematic” and “assertoric”, based on how the end is willed. If the end is one that we might or might not will — that is, it is a merely possible end — the imperative is problematic. For instance, “Don’t ever take side with anyone against the Family.” is a problematic imperative, even if the end posited here is (apparently) one’s own continued existence. Almost all non-moral, rational imperatives are problematic, since there are virtually no ends that we necessarily will as human beings.

As it turns out, the only (non-moral) end that we will, as a matter of natural necessity, is our own happiness. Any imperative that applied to us because we will our own happiness would thus be an assertoric imperative. Rationality, Kant thinks, can issue no imperative if the end is indeterminate, and happiness is an indeterminate end. Although we can say for the most part that if one is to be happy, one should save for the future, take care of one’s health and nourish one’s relationships, these fail to be genuine commands in the strictest sense and so are instead mere “counsels.” Some people are happy without these, and whether you could be happy without them is, although doubtful, an open question.

Since Kant presents moral and prudential rational requirements as first and foremost demands on our wills rather than on external acts, moral and prudential evaluation is first and foremost an evaluation of the will our actions express. Thus, it is not an error of rationality to fail to take the necessary means to one’s (willed) ends, nor to fail to want to take the means; one only falls foul of non-moral practical reason if one fails to will the means. Likewise, while actions, feelings or desires may be the focus of other moral views, for Kant practical irrationality, both moral and prudential, focuses mainly on our willing.

One recent interpretive dispute (Hill 1973; Schroeder 2009; Rippon 2014) has been about whether hypothetical imperatives, in Kant’s view, have a “wide” or “narrow” scope. That is, do such imperatives tell us to take the necessary means to our ends or give up our ends (wide scope) or do they simply tell us that, if we have an end, then take the necessary means to it.

Kant describes the will as operating on the basis of subjective volitional principles he calls “maxims”. Hence, morality and other rational requirements are, for the most part, demands that apply to the maxims that we act on. . The form of a maxim is “I will A in C in order to realize or produce E ” where “ A ” is some act type, “ C ” is some type of circumstance, and “ E ” is some type of end to be realized or achieved by A in C. Since this is a principle stating only what some agent wills, it is subjective . (A principle that governs any rational will is an objective principle of volition, which Kant refers to as a practical law). For anything to count as human willing, it must be based on a maxim to pursue some end through some means. Hence, in employing a maxim, any human willing already embodies the form of means-end reasoning that calls for evaluation in terms of hypothetical imperatives. To that extent at least, then, anything dignified as human willing is subject to rational requirements.

Kant’s first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). O’Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1980, 1989), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure for moral reasoning, and we will follow their basic outline: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your proposed plan of action. Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this new law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible.

If your maxim fails the third step, you have a “perfect” duty admitting “of no exception in favor of inclination” to refrain from acting on that maxim (G 4:421). If your maxim fails the fourth step, you have an “imperfect” duty requiring you to pursue a policy that can admit of such exceptions. If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible. Following Hill (1971), we can understand the difference in duties as formal: Perfect duties come in the form “One must never (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C ”, while imperfect duties, since they require us to adopt an end, at least require that “One must sometimes and to some extent φ in C .” So, for instance, Kant held that the maxim of committing suicide to avoid future unhappiness did not pass the third step, the contradiction in conception test. Hence, one is forbidden to act on the maxim of committing suicide to avoid unhappiness. By contrast, the maxim of refusing to assist others in pursuit of their projects passes the contradiction in conception test, but fails the contradiction in the will test at the fourth step. Hence, we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent aid and assist others.

Kant held that ordinary moral thought recognized moral duties toward ourselves as well as toward others. Hence, together with the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, Kant recognized four categories of duties: perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others. Kant uses four examples in the Groundwork , one of each kind of duty, to demonstrate that every kind of duty can be derived from the CI, and hence to bolster his case that the CI is indeed the fundamental principle of morality. To refrain from suicide is a perfect duty toward oneself; to refrain from making promises you have no intention of keeping is a perfect duty toward others; to develop one’s talents is an imperfect duty toward oneself; and to contribute to the happiness of others is an imperfect duty toward others. Again, Kant’s interpreters differ over exactly how to reconstruct the derivation of these duties. We will briefly sketch one way of doing so for the perfect duty to others to refrain from lying promises and the imperfect duty to ourselves to develop talents.

Kant’s example of a perfect duty to others concerns a promise you might consider making but have no intention of keeping in order to get needed money. Naturally, being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is no self-contradiction in the maxim “I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want.” An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense (as would the maxim of finding a married bachelor). Kant’s position is that it is irrational to perform an action if that action’s maxim contradicts itself once made into a universal law of nature . The maxim of lying whenever it gets you what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when doing so gets them what they want.

Here is one way of seeing how this might work: If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to deceive people any time this will get them what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one’s word could ever arise and, because this is a law of nature, we can assume that it is widely known that no such practice could exist. So I am conceiving of a world in which everyone knows that no practice of giving one’s word exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money. And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in trying to conceive of my maxim in a world in which no one ever takes anyone’s word in such circumstances, and knows this about one another, I am trying to conceive of this: A world in which no practice of giving one’s word exists, but also, at the very same time, a world in which just such a practice does exist, for me to make use of in my maxim. It is a world containing my promise and a world in which there can be no promises. Hence, it is inconceivable that I could sincerely act on my maxim in a world in which my maxim is a universal law of nature. Since it is inconceivable that these two things could exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money.

By contrast with the maxim of the lying promise, we can easily conceive of adopting a maxim of refusing to develop any of our talents in a world in which that maxim is a universal law of nature. It would undoubtedly be a world more primitive than our own, but pursuing such a policy is still conceivable in it. However, it is not, Kant argues, possible to rationally will this maxim in such a world. The argument for why this is so, however, is not obvious, and some of Kant’s thinking seems hardly convincing: Insofar as we are rational, he says, we already necessarily will that all of our talents and abilities be developed. Hence, although I can conceive of a talentless world, I cannot rationally will that it come about, given that I already will, insofar as I am rational, that I develop all of my own. Yet, given limitations on our time, energy and interest, it is difficult to see how full rationality requires us to aim to fully develop literally all of our talents. Indeed, it seems to require much less, a judicious picking and choosing among one’s abilities. Further, all that is required to show that I cannot will a talentless world is that, insofar as I am rational, I necessarily will that some talents in me be developed, not the dubious claim that I rationally will that they all be developed. Moreover, suppose rationality did require me to aim at developing all of my talents. Then, there seems to be no need to go further in the CI procedure to show that refusing to develop talents is immoral. Given that, insofar as we are rational, we must will to develop capacities, it is by this very fact irrational not to do so.

However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality. Failure to conform to instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not always immoral. In order to show that this maxim is categorically forbidden, one strategy is to make use of several other of Kant’s claims or assumptions.

First, we must accept Kant’s claim that, by “natural necessity,” we will our own happiness as an end (G 4:415). This is a claim he uses not only to distinguish assertoric from problematic imperatives, but also to argue for the imperfect duty of helping others (G 4:423) He also appears to rely on this claim in each of his examples. Each maxim he is testing appears to have happiness as its aim. One explanation for this is that, since each person necessarily wills her own happiness, maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral evaluation. This, at any rate, is clear in the talents example itself: The forbidden maxim adopted by the ne’er-do-well is supposed to be “devoting his life solely to…enjoyment” (G 4:423) rather than to developing his talents.

Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving (normal) human happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of theirs at some time. For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself, and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and developed traditions of their preparation.

Finally, Kant’s examples come on the heels of defending the position that rationality requires conformity to hypothetical imperatives. Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and available means to any ends that they will. And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any of their natural talents. We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving ourselves over to pleasure rather than self-development. Since we will the necessary and available means to our ends, we are rationally committed to willing that everyone sometime develop his or her talents. So since we cannot will as a universal law of nature that no one ever develop any talents — given that it is inconsistent with what we now see that we rationally will — we are forbidden from adopting the maxim of refusing to develop any of our own.

Most philosophers who find Kant’s views attractive find them so because of the Humanity Formulation of the CI. This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself. This is often seen as introducing the idea of “respect” for persons, for whatever it is that is essential to our humanity. Kant was clearly right that this and the other formulations bring the CI “closer to intuition” than the Universal Law formula. Intuitively, there seems something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. But this very intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings.

First, the Humanity Formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends. Clearly this would be an absurd demand, since we apparently do this all the time in morally appropriate ways. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that have been developed through the exercise of the wills of many people. What the Humanity Formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends. Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a means of transportation. Unlike a horse, the taxi driver’s humanity must at the same time be treated as an end in itself.

Second, it is not human beings per se but the “humanity” in human beings that we must treat as an end in itself. Our “humanity” is that collection of features that make us distinctively human, and these include capacities to engage in self-directed rational behavior and to adopt and pursue our own ends, and any other rational capacities necessarily connected with these. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means only if we behave in a way that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to — for instance, by paying an agreed on price.

Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense. An end in the first positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world. For instance, if losing weight is my end, then losing weight is something I aim to bring about. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will to produce something, I then deliberate about and aim to pursue means of producing it if I am rational. Humanity is not an “end” in this sense, though even in this case, the end “lays down a law” for me. Once I have adopted an end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I should act in ways that will bring about the end or instead choose to abandon my goal.

An end in the negative sense lays down a law for me as well, and so guides action, but in a different way. Korsgaard (1996) offers self-preservation as an example of an end in a negative sense: We do not try to produce our self-preservation. Rather, the end of self-preservation prevents us from engaging in certain kinds of activities, for instance, picking fights with mobsters, and so on. That is, as an end, it is something I do not act against in pursuing my positive ends, rather than something I produce.

Humanity is in the first instance an end in this negative sense: It is something that limits what I may do in pursuit of my other ends, similar to the way that my end of self-preservation limits what I may do in pursuit of other ends. Insofar as it limits my actions, it is a source of perfect duties. Now many of our ends are subjective in that they are not ends that every rational being must have. Humanity is an objective end, because it is an end that every rational being must have. Hence, my own humanity as well as the humanity of others limit what I am morally permitted to do when I pursue my other, non-mandatory, ends.

The humanity in myself and others is also a positive end, though not in the first positive sense above, as something to be produced by my actions. Rather, it is something to realize, cultivate or further by my actions. Becoming a philosopher, pianist or novelist might be my end in this sense. When my end is becoming a pianist, my actions do not, or at least not simply, produce something, being a pianist, but constitute or realize the activity of being a pianist. Insofar as the humanity in ourselves must be treated as an end in itself in this second positive sense, it must be cultivated, developed or fully actualized. Hence, the humanity in oneself is the source of a duty to develop one’s talents or to “perfect” one’s humanity. When one makes one’s own humanity one’s end, one pursues its development, much as when one makes becoming a pianist one’s end, one pursues the development of piano playing. And insofar as humanity is a positive end in others, I must attempt to further their ends as well. In so doing, I further the humanity in others, by helping further the projects and ends that they have willingly adopted for themselves. It is this sense of humanity as an end-in-itself on which some of Kant’s arguments for imperfect duties rely.

Finally, Kant’s Humanity Formula requires “respect” for the humanity in persons. Proper regard for something with absolute value or worth requires respect for it. But this can invite misunderstandings. One way in which we respect persons, termed “appraisal respect” by Stephen Darwall (1977), is clearly not the same as the kind of respect required by the Humanity Formula: I may respect you as a rebounder but not a scorer, or as a researcher but not as a teacher. When I respect you in this way, I am positively appraising you in light of some achievement or virtue you possess relative to some standard of success. If this were the sort of respect Kant is counseling then clearly it may vary from person to person and is surely not what treating something as an end-in-itself requires. For instance, it does not seem to prevent me from regarding rationality as an achievement and respecting one person as a rational agent in this sense, but not another. And Kant is not telling us to ignore differences, to pretend that we are blind to them on mindless egalitarian grounds. However, a distinct way in which we respect persons, referred to as “recognition respect” by Darwall, better captures Kant’s position: I may respect you because you are a student, a Dean, a doctor or a mother. In such cases of respecting you because of who or what you are, I am giving the proper regard to a certain fact about you, your being a Dean for instance. This sort of respect, unlike appraisal respect, is not a matter of degree based on your having measured up to some standard of assessment. Respect for the humanity in persons is more like Darwall’s recognition respect. We are to respect human beings simply because they are persons and this requires a certain sort of regard. We are not called on to respect them insofar as they have met some standard of evaluation appropriate to persons. And, crucially for Kant, persons cannot lose their humanity by their misdeeds – even the most vicious persons, Kant thought, deserve basic respect as persons with humanity.

The third formulation of the CI is “the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal law .” (G 4:432). Although Kant does not state this as an imperative, as he does in the other formulations, it is easy enough to put it in that form: Act so that through your maxims you could be a legislator of universal laws. This sounds very similar to the first formulation. However, in this case we focus on our status as universal law givers rather than universal law followers . This is of course the source of the very dignity of humanity Kant speaks of in the second formulation. A rational will that is merely bound by universal laws could act accordingly from natural and non-moral motives, such as self-interest. But in order to be a legislator of universal laws, such contingent motives, motives that rational agents such as ourselves may or may not have, must be set aside. Hence, we are required, according to this formulation, to conform our behavior to principles that express this autonomy of the rational will — its status as a source of the very universal laws that obligate it. As with the Humanity Formula, this new formulation of the CI does not change the outcome, since each is supposed to formulate the very same moral law, and in some sense “unite” the other formulations within it. Kant takes each formulation that succeeds the first in its own way as bringing the moral law “closer to feeling”. The Autonomy Formula presumably does this by putting on display the source of our dignity and worth, our status as free rational agents who are the source of the authority behind the very moral laws that bind us.

This formulation has gained favor among Kantians in recent years (see Rawls, 1971; Hill, 1972). Many see it as introducing more of a social dimension to Kantian morality. Kant states that the above concept of every rational will as a will that must regard itself as enacting laws binding all rational wills is closely connected to another concept, that of a “systematic union of different rational beings under common laws”, or a “Kingdom of Ends” (G 4:433). The formulation of the CI states that we must “act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends” (G 4:439). It combines the others in that (i) it requires that we conform our actions to the laws of an ideal moral legislature, (ii) that this legislature lays down universal laws, binding all rational wills including our own, and (iii) that those laws are of “a merely possible kingdom” each of whose members equally possesses this status as legislator of universal laws, and hence must be treated always as an end in itself. The intuitive idea behind this formulation is that our fundamental moral obligation is to act only on principles which could earn acceptance by a community of fully rational agents each of whom have an equal share in legislating these principles for their community.

Kant claimed that all of these CI formulas were equivalent. Unfortunately, he does not say in what sense. What he says is that these “are basically only so many formulations of precisely the same law, each one of them by itself uniting the other two within it,” and that the differences between them are “more subjectively than objectively practical” in the sense that each aims “to bring an Idea of reason closer to intuition (by means of a certain analogy) and thus nearer to feeling” (G 4:435). He also says that one formula “follows from” another (G 4:431), and that the concept foundational to one formula “leads to a closely connected” concept at the basis of another formula (G 4:433). Thus, his claim that the formulations are equivalent could be interpreted in a number of ways.

Kant’s statement that each formula “unites the other two within it” initially suggests that the formulas are equivalent in meaning , or at least one could analytically derive one formula from another. Some of Kant’s commentators, for example, have argued along the following lines: That I should always treat humanity as an end in itself entails that I should act only on maxims that are consistent with themselves as universal laws of nature (O’Neill 1975, 1990; Engstrom 2009; Sensen 2011). There are remaining doubts some commentators have, however, about whether this strategy can capture the full meaning of the Humanity Formula or explain all of the duties that Kant claims to derive from it (Wood 1999, 2007; Cureton 2013).

Perhaps, then, if the formulas are not equivalent in meaning, they are nevertheless logically interderivable and hence equivalent in this sense. The universal law formula is not itself derived, as some of Kant’s interpreters have suggested, from the principle of non-contradiction. That would have the consequence that the CI is a logical truth, and Kant insists that it is not or at least that it is not analytic. Since the CI formulas are not logical truths, then, it is possible that they could be logically interderivable. However, despite his claim that each contains the others within it, what we find in the Groundwork seems best interpreted as a derivation of each successive formula from the immediately preceding formula. There are, nonetheless, a few places in which it seems that Kant is trying to work in the opposite direction. One is found in his discussion of the Humanity Formula. There Kant says that only something “ whose existence in itself had an absolute worth” could be the ground of a categorically binding law (G 4:428). He then boldly proclaims that humanity is this absolutely valuable thing, referring to this as a “postulate” that he will argue for in the final chapter of the Groundwork (G 4:429n). One might take this as expressing Kant’s intention to derive thereby the universal law formula from the Humanity Formula: If something is absolutely valuable, then we must act only on maxims that can be universal laws. But (he postulates) humanity is absolutely valuable. Thus , we must act only on maxims that can be universal laws. This (we think) anomalous discussion may well get at some deep sense in which Kant thought the formulations were equivalent. Nonetheless, this derivation of the universal law formulation from the Humanity Formulation seems to require a substantive, synthetic claim, namely, that humanity is indeed absolutely valuable. And if it does require this, then, contrary to Kant’s own insistence, the argument of Groundwork II does not appear to be merely an analytic argument meant simply to establish the content of the moral law.

The most straightforward interpretation of the claim that the formulas are equivalent is as the claim that following or applying each formula would generate all and only the same duties (Allison 2011). This seems to be supported by the fact that Kant used the same examples through the Law of Nature Formula and the Humanity Formula. Thus, the Universal Law Formulation generates a duty to φ if and only if the Humanity Formula generates a duty to φ, (and so on for the other formulations). In other words, respect for humanity as an end in itself could never lead you to act on maxims that would generate a contradiction when universalized, and vice versa. This way of understanding Kant’s claim also fits with his statement that there is no “objective practical difference” between the formulations although there are “subjective” differences. The subjective differences between formulas are presumably differences that appeal in different ways to various conceptions of what morality demands of us. But this difference in meaning is compatible with there being no practical difference, in the sense that conformity to one formulation cannot lead one to violate another formulation.

At the heart of Kant’s moral theory is the idea of autonomy. Most readers interpret Kant as holding that autonomy is a property of rational wills or agents. Understanding the idea of autonomy was, in Kant’s view, key to understanding and justifying the authority that moral requirements have over us. As with Rousseau, whose views influenced Kant, freedom does not consist in being bound by no law, but by laws that are in some sense of one’s own making. The idea of freedom as autonomy thus goes beyond the merely “negative” sense of being free from causes on our conduct originating outside of ourselves. It contains first and foremost the idea of laws made and laid down by oneself, and, in virtue of this, laws that have decisive authority over oneself.

Kant’s basic idea can be grasped intuitively by analogy with the idea of political freedom as autonomy (See Reath 1994). Consider how political freedom in liberal theories is thought to be related to legitimate political authority: A state is free when its citizens are bound only by laws in some sense of their own making — created and put into effect, say, by vote or by elected representatives. The laws of that state then express the will of the citizens who are bound by them. The idea, then, is that the source of legitimate political authority is not external to its citizens, but internal to them, internal to “the will of the people.” It is because the body politic created and enacted these laws for itself that it can be bound by them. An autonomous state is thus one in which the authority of its laws is in the will of the people in that state, rather than in the will of a people external to that state, as when one state imposes laws on another during occupation or colonization. In the latter case, the laws have no legitimate authority over those citizens. In a similar fashion, we may think of a person as free when bound only by her own will and not by the will of another. Her actions then express her own will and not the will of someone or something else. The authority of the principles binding her will is then also not external to her will. It comes from the fact that she willed them. So autonomy, when applied to an individual, ensures that the source of the authority of the principles that bind her is in her own will. Kant’s view can be seen as the view that the moral law is just such a principle. Hence, the “moral legitimacy” of the CI is grounded in its being an expression of each person’s own rational will. It is because each person’s own reason is the legislator and executor of the moral law that it is authoritative for her. (For a contrasting interpretation of autonomy that emphasizes the intrinsic value of freedom of choice and the instrumental role of reason in preserving that value, see Guyer 2007).

Kant argues that the idea of an autonomous will emerges from a consideration of the idea of a will that is free “in a negative sense.” The concept of a rational will is of a will that operates by responding to what it takes to be reasons. This is, firstly, the concept of a will that does not operate through the influence of factors outside of this responsiveness to apparent reasons. For a will to be free is thus for it to be physically and psychologically unforced in its operation. Hence, behaviors that are performed because of obsessions or thought disorders are not free in this negative sense. But also, for Kant, a will that operates by being determined through the operation of natural laws, such as those of biology or psychology, cannot be thought of as operating by responding to reasons. Hence, determination by natural laws is conceptually incompatible with being free in a negative sense.

A crucial move in Kant’s argument is his claim that a rational will cannot act except “under the Idea” of its own freedom (G 4:448). The expression “acting under the Idea of freedom” is easy to misunderstand. It does not mean that a rational will must believe it is free, since determinists are as free as libertarians in Kant’s view. Indeed, Kant goes out of his way in his most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason , to argue that we have no rational basis for believing our wills to be free. This would involve, he argues, attributing a property to our wills that they would have to have as ‘things in themselves’ apart from the causally determined world of appearances. Of such things, he insists, we can have no knowledge. For much the same reason, Kant is not claiming that a rational will cannot operate without feeling free. Feelings, even the feeling of operating freely or the “looseness” Hume refers to when we act, cannot be used in an a priori argument to establish the CI, since they are empirical data.

One helpful way to understand acting “under the Idea of freedom” is by analogy with acting “under the Idea” that there are purposes in nature: Although there is, according to Kant, no rational basis for the belief that the natural world is (or is not) arranged according to some purpose by a Designer, the actual practices of science often require looking for the purpose of this or that chemical, organ, creature, environment, and so on. Thus, one engages in these natural sciences by searching for purposes in nature. Yet when an evolutionary biologist, for instance, looks for the purpose of some organ in some creature, she does not after all thereby believe that the creature was designed that way, for instance, by a Deity. Nor is she having some feeling of “designedness” in the creature. To say that she “acts under the Idea of” design is to say something about the practice of biology: Practicing biology involves searching for the purposes of the parts of living organisms. In much the same way, although there is no rational justification for the belief that our wills are (or are not) free, the actual practice of practical deliberation and decision consists of a search for the right causal chain of which to be the origin — consists, that is, seeking to be the first causes of things, wholly and completely through the exercise of one’s own will.

Kant says that a will that cannot exercise itself except under the Idea of its freedom is free from a practical point of view ( im practischer Absicht ). In saying such wills are free from a practical point of view, he is saying that in engaging in practical endeavors — trying to decide what to do, what to hold oneself and others responsible for, and so on — one is justified in holding oneself to all of the principles to which one would be justified in holding wills that are autonomous free wills. Thus, once we have established the set of prescriptions, rules, laws and directives that would bind an autonomous free will, we then hold ourselves to this very same of set prescriptions, rules, laws and directives. And one is justified in this because rational agency can only operate by seeking to be the first cause of its actions, and these are the prescriptions, and so on, of being a first cause of action. Therefore, rational agents are free in a negative sense insofar as any practical matter is at issue.

Crucially, rational wills that are negatively free must be autonomous, or so Kant argues. This is because the will is a kind of cause—willing causes action. Kant took from Hume the idea that causation implies universal regularities: if x causes y , then there is some universally valid law connecting X s to Y s. So, if my will is the cause of my φing, then Φing is connected to the sort of willing I engage in by some universal law. But it can’t be a natural law, such as a psychological, physical, chemical or biological law. These laws, which Kant thought were universal too, govern the movements of my body, the workings of my brain and nervous system and the operation of my environment and its effects on me as a material being. But they cannot be the laws governing the operation of my will; that, Kant already argued, is inconsistent with the freedom of my will in a negative sense. So, the will operates according to a universal law, though not one authored by nature, but one of which I am the origin or author. And that is to say that, in viewing my willing to φ as a negatively free cause of my φing, I must view my will as the autonomous cause of my having φed, as causing my having φed by way of some law that I, insofar as I am a rational will, laid down for my will.

Thus, Kant argues, a rational will, insofar as it is rational, is a will conforming itself to those laws valid for any rational will. Addressed to imperfectly rational wills, such as our own, this becomes an imperative: “Conform your action to a universal non-natural law.” Kant assumed that there was some connection between this formal requirement and the formulation of the CI which enjoins us to “Act as though the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.” But, as commentators have long noticed (see, e.g. , Hill, 1989a, 1989b), it is not clear what the link is between the claim that rational autonomous wills conform themselves to whatever universally valid laws require, and the more substantial and controversial claim that you should evaluate your maxims in the ways implied by the universal law of nature formulation.

Kant appeared not to recognize the gap between the law of an autonomous rational will and the CI, but he was apparently unsatisfied with the argument establishing the CI in Groundwork III for another reason, namely, the fact that it does not prove that we really are free. In the Critique of Practical Reason , he states that it is simply a “fact of reason” ( Factum der Vernunft ) that our wills are bound by the CI, and he uses this to argue that our wills are autonomous. Hence, while in the Groundwork Kant relies on a dubious argument for our autonomy to establish that we are bound by the moral law, in the second Critique , he argues from the bold assertion of our being bound by the moral law to our autonomy.

The apparent failure of Kant’s argument to establish the autonomy of the will, and hence the authority of moral demands over us, has not deterred his followers from trying to make good on this project. One strategy favored recently has been to turn back to the arguments of Groundwork II for help. Kant himself repeatedly claimed that these arguments are merely analytic but that they do not establish that there is anything that answers to the concepts he analyzes. The conclusions are thus fully compatible with morality being, as he puts it, a “mere phantom of the brain” (G 4:445). Kant clearly takes himself to have established that rational agents such as ourselves must take the means to our ends, since this is analytic of rational agency. But there is a chasm between this analytic claim and the supposed synthetic conclusion that rational agency also requires conforming to a further, non-desire based, principle of practical reason such as the CI. Nevertheless, some see arguments in Groundwork II that establish just this. These strategies involve a new “teleological” reading of Kant’s ethics that relies on establishing the existence of an absolute value or an “end in itself” (we say more about this teleological reading below). They begin with Kant’s own stated assumption that there is such an end in itself if and only if there is a categorical imperative binding on all rational agents as such. If this assumption is true, then if one can on independent grounds prove that there is something which is an end in itself, one will have an argument for a categorical imperative. One such strategy, favored by Korsgaard (1996) and Wood (1999) relies on the apparent argument Kant gives that humanity is an end in itself. Guyer, by contrast, sees an argument for freedom as an end in itself (Guyer 2000). Both strategies have faced textual and philosophical hurdles. Considerable interpretive finesse, for instance, is required to explain Kant’s stark insistence on the priority of principles and law over the good in the second Critique (CPrR 5:57–67)

Although most of Kant’s readers understand the property of autonomy as being a property of rational wills, some, such as Thomas E. Hill, have held that Kant’s central idea is that of autonomy is a property, not primarily of wills, but of principles. The core idea is that Kant believed that all moral theories prior to his own went astray because they portrayed fundamental moral principles as appealing to the existing interests of those bound by them. By contrast, in Kant’s view moral principles must not appeal to such interests, for no interest is necessarily universal. Thus, in assuming at the outset that moral principles must embody some interest (or “heteronomous” principles), such theories rule out the very possibility that morality is universally binding. By contrast, the Categorical Imperative, because it does not enshrine existing interests, presumes that rational agents can conform to a principle that does not appeal to their interests (or an “autonomous” principle), and so can fully ground our conception, according to Kant, of what morality requires of us.

A different interpretive strategy, which has gained prominence in recent years, focuses on Kant’s apparent identification, in Groundwork III, of the will and practical reason. One natural way of interpreting Kant’s conception of freedom is to understand it in terms of the freedom and spontaneity of reason itself. This in turn apparently implies that our wills are necessarily aimed at what is rational and reasonable. To will something, on this picture, is to govern oneself in accordance with reason. Often, however, we fail to effectively so govern ourselves because we are imperfect rational beings who are caused to act by our non–rational desires and inclinations. The result, at least on one version of this interpretation (Wolff 1973), is that we either act rationally and reasonably (and so autonomously) or we are merely caused to behave in certain ways by non–rational forces acting on us (and so heteronomously). This is, however, an implausible view. It implies that all irrational acts, and hence all immoral acts, are not willed and therefore not free. Most interpreters have denied that this is the proper interpretation of Kant’s views. However, several prominent commentators nonetheless think that there is some truth in it (Engstrom 2009; Reath 2015; Korsgaard 1996, 2008, 2009). They agree that we always act under the “guise of the good” in the sense that our will is necessarily aimed at what is objectively and subjectively rational and reasonable, but these interpreters also think that, for Kant, there is a middle–ground between perfect conformity to reason and being caused to act by natural forces. In particular, when we act immorally, we are either weak–willed or we are misusing our practical reason by willing badly. We do not have the capacity to aim to act on an immoral maxim because the will is identified with practical reason, so when we will to perform an immoral act, we implicitly but mistakenly take our underlying policy to be required by reason. By representing our immoral act as rational and reasonable, we are not exercising our powers of reason well, so we are simply making a “choice” that is contrary to reason without “willing” it as such. Our choice is nonetheless free and attributable to us because our will was involved in leading us to take the act to be rational and reasonable. It remains to be seen whether, on this complicated interpretation of Kant, it sufficiently allows for the possibility that one can knowingly and willingly do wrong if the will is practical reason and practical reason is, in part, the moral law.

Several recent discussions of Kant’s moral theory have focused on understanding and assessing its implications for how we should regard and treat people with various kinds of disabilities. Kant does not say much explicitly about those with disabilities, but his moral framework is often seen as both hostile to and supportive of the interests of disabled people.

One of the most important criticisms of Kant’s moral theory concerns human beings with severe cognitive disabilities who lack the moral capacities and dispositions that, according to Kant, are needed for people to have dignity, be ends in themselves, possess moral rights, legislate moral laws, be a member of the kingdom of ends, or otherwise have basic moral status (Kittay 2005, Vorhaus 2020, Barclay 2020; cf. the SEP entry cognitive disability and moral status ). When we reflect on what makes us morally special, according to Kant, we find that it is not our contingent properties, the biological species we belong to, or even our capacity to be conscious or to feel pain. Kant argues that rational nature, specifically the moral capacities and dispositions to legislate and follow moral principles, is what gives us inner worth and makes us deserving of respect (G 4:428–36, 446–7; Rel 6:26). Our basic moral status does not come in degrees. It is always equal to that of other people regardless of the level, if any, at which our moral capacities and dispositions are developed, realized, or exercised. Infants and young children, according to Kant, almost always have a moral nature even though their moral capacities and dispositions are undeveloped or underdeveloped (MM 6:280–1, 422; see also Schapiro 1999). Virtually all people with Down Syndrome and autism have basic moral status even if their moral capacities and dispositions are not as fully realized or exercised as they are in other people. Being asleep or in a coma does not preclude someone from having basic moral status even if their moral capacities and dispositions are temporarily or permanently dormant. Some human beings with significant cognitive disabilities, however, do not have even bare capacities or dispositions to recognize, accept, legislate, and follow moral norms. Kant seems to imply that anencephalic infants, those in persistent vegetative states, and other human beings with the most severe cognitive disabilities lack dignity and are not ends in themselves. They are apparently excluded from the moral community in ways that have unacceptable implications for how we should or should not regard and treat them.

There is little or no evidence that Kant himself thought about this problem, which is also connected with the moral status of many non-human animals who seem to matter morally but who lack the moral capacities and dispositions that, according to Kant, are necessary for basic moral status. Kant’s defenders have nonetheless explored what his basic moral framework might imply about the moral status of those with severe cognitive disabilities. One approach is simply to bite the bullet by admitting that people with certain severe cognitive disabilities lack the basic moral status that others of us share (Wood 1998, Sussman 2001. (This general strategy is deployed by Regan and followed by Wood, McMahan, Warren, Merkel, and others. For the claim that such humans are not persons, on Kant’s theory, see also Sussman, Idea , 242.) Proponents of this view can emphasize that, although we do not have duties to such people, we can have duties regarding them, such as duties of moral self-improvement that give us reasons to treat those with significant cognitive disabilities humanely for the sake of improving how we treat other human beings with basic moral status (MM 6:442) or duties of beneficence that give us reasons to care for them as a kindness to their families (G 4:430). Pragmatic considerations might also give us reasons to err on the side of caution when it comes to assessing whether someone entirely lacks the moral capacities and dispositions that ground basic moral status. Because of difficulties making such determinations and the moral risks involved in judging incorrectly, we should perhaps assume, unless we have very strong evidence to the contrary, that each human being has basic moral status (Korsgaard 1996).

A second approach to addressing the problem of moral status for those with significant cognitive disabilities is to emphasize passages in which Kant says all human beings have dignity or are ends in themselves (G 4:428–29; MM 6:410) and to argue that, according to Kant’s theories of biology and psychology, all human beings, including those with severe cognitive disabilities, necessarily have the requisite features of moral personhood (Kain 2009). A third approach is to draw on and perhaps supplement some of Kant’s moral views by, for example, arguing that because we value things, we must value ourselves as ends, which in turn commits us to valuing all human and non-human animals as ends (Korsgaard 2020) or that respect for all human beings is a constitutive feature of rational agency that does not depend on any intrinsic properties of the objects of respect (Sensen 2018).

In addition to discussing the moral status of people with severe cognitive disabilities, Kantian philosophers have also been exploring how his moral theory applies to other moral issues that concern how we should regard and treat people with disabilities. Although Kant’s focus was on specifying principles for all circumstances or for all human contexts, he recognized that a complete specification of his system of moral duties, ends, and ideals must include applications of basic moral standards to particular contexts and groups of people (MM 6:468–9).

When prospective parents choose not to produce children that would likely have disabilities, they might express disrespectful attitudes about existing people with disabilities (Velleman 2015, Sussman 2018). People with disabilities are often ridiculed, abused, treated as children, denied opportunities to continue developing their natural abilities in, for example, assisted living facilities that instead emphasize their comfort, and excluded from friendships or other forms of solidarity in ways that arguably violate moral duties that Kant describes (Cureton 2021, Hill 2020). They often face obstacles to developing and maintaining self-respect by those who regard them as, for example, burdensome, malingering, or curiosities (Stohr 2018). People with disabilities also tend to receive assistance from others that is incompatible with the respect they are owed. Beneficence, according to Kant, must be tempered by respect so that we do not, for example, impose burdensome obligations of gratitude on a blind person who would rather navigate to the next conference session herself, “help” a Deaf person by offering to pay for cochlear implants that he does not want, finish the sentences of someone with a speech impediment in ways that express condescension or pity, or mistake a strict duty to install a wheelchair ramp as an optional duty of charity (Cureton 2016, Holtman 2018).

Kant defines virtue as “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty” (MM 6:405) and vice as principled immorality (MM 6:390). This definition appears to put Kant’s views on virtue at odds with classical views such as Aristotle’s in several important respects.

First, Kant’s account of virtue presupposes an account of moral duty already in place. Thus, rather than treating admirable character traits as more basic than the notions of right and wrong conduct, Kant takes virtues to be explicable only in terms of a prior account of moral or dutiful behavior. He does not try to make out what shape a good character has and then draw conclusions about how we ought to act on that basis. He sets out the principles of moral conduct based on his philosophical account of rational agency, and then on that basis defines virtue as a kind of strength and resolve to act on those principles despite temptations to the contrary.

Second, virtue is, for Kant, strength of will, and hence does not arise as the result of instilling a “second nature” by a process of habituating or training ourselves to act and feel in particular ways. It is indeed a disposition, but a disposition of one’s will, not a disposition of emotions, feelings, desires or any other feature of human nature that might be amenable to habituation. Moreover, the disposition is to overcome obstacles to moral behavior that Kant thought were ineradicable features of human nature. Thus, virtue appears to be much more like what Aristotle would have thought of as a lesser trait, viz., continence or self-control.

Third, in viewing virtue as a trait grounded in moral principles, and vice as principled transgression of moral law, Kant thought of himself as thoroughly rejecting what he took to be the Aristotelian view that virtue is a mean between two vices. The Aristotelian view, he claimed, assumes that virtue typically differs from vice only in terms of degree rather than in terms of the different principles each involves (MM 6:404, 432). Prodigality and avarice, for instance, do not differ by being too loose or not loose enough with one’s means. They differ in that the prodigal person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of enjoyment, while the avaricious person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of possessing them.

Fourth, in classical views the distinction between moral and non-moral virtues is not particularly significant. A virtue is some sort of excellence of the soul, but one finds classical theorists treating wit and friendliness alongside courage and justice. Since Kant holds moral virtue to be a trait grounded in moral principle, the boundary between non-moral and moral virtues could not be more sharp. Even so, Kant shows a remarkable interest in non-moral virtues; indeed, much of Anthropology is given over to discussing the nature and sources of a variety of character traits, both moral and non-moral.

Fifth, virtue cannot be a trait of divine beings, if there are such, since it is the power to overcome obstacles that would not be present in them. This is not to say that to be virtuous is to be the victor in a constant and permanent war with ineradicable evil impulses or temptations. Morality is “duty” for human beings because it is possible (and we recognize that it is possible) for our desires and interests to run counter to its demands. Should all of our desires and interests be trained ever so carefully to comport with what morality actually requires of us, this would not change in the least the fact that morality is still duty for us. For should this come to pass, it would not change the fact that each and every desire and interest could have run contrary to the moral law. And it is the fact that they can conflict with moral law, not the fact that they actually do conflict with it, that makes duty a constraint, and hence is virtue essentially a trait concerned with constraint.

Sixth, virtue, while important, does not hold pride of place in Kant’s system in other respects. For instance, he holds that the lack of virtue is compatible with possessing a good will (G 6: 408). That one acts from duty, even repeatedly and reliably can thus be quite compatible with an absence of the moral strength to overcome contrary interests and desires. Indeed, it may often be no challenge at all to do one’s duty from duty alone. Someone with a good will, who is genuinely committed to duty for its own sake, might simply fail to encounter any significant temptation that would reveal the lack of strength to follow through with that commitment. That said, he also appeared to hold that if an act is to be of genuine moral worth, it must be motivated by the kind of purity of motivation achievable only through a permanent, quasi-religious conversion or “revolution” in the orientation of the will of the sort described in Religion . Until one achieves a permanent change in the will’s orientation in this respect, a revolution in which moral righteousness is the nonnegotiable condition of any of one’s pursuits, all of one’s actions that are in accordance with duty are nevertheless morally worthless, no matter what else may be said of them. However, even this revolution in the will must be followed up with a gradual, lifelong strengthening of one’s will to put this revolution into practice. This suggests that Kant’s considered view is that a good will is a will in which this revolution of priorities has been achieved, while a virtuous will is one with the strength to overcome obstacles to its manifestation in practice.

Kant distinguishes between virtue, which is strength of will to do one’s duty from duty, and particular virtues, which are commitments to particular moral ends that we are morally required to adopt. Among the virtues Kant discusses are those of self-respect, honesty, thrift, self-improvement, beneficence, gratitude, sociability, and forgiveness. Kant also distinguishes vice, which is a steadfast commitment to immorality, from particular vices, which involve refusing to adopt specific moral ends or committing to act against those ends. For example, malice, lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, vengefulness, envy, servility, contempt and arrogance are all vices in Kant’s normative ethical theory.

(Interest in Kant’s conception of virtue has rapidly grown in recent years. For further discussion, see Cureton and Hill 2014, forthcoming; Wood 2008; Surprenant 2014; Sherman 1997; O’Neil 1996; Johnson 2008; Hill 2012; Herman 1996; Engstrom 2002; Denis 2006; Cureton forthcoming; Betzler 2008; Baxley 2010).

The Categorical Imperative, in Kant’s view, is an objective, unconditional and necessary principle of reason that applies to all rational agents in all circumstances. Although Kant gives several examples in the Groundwork that illustrate this principle, he goes on to describe in later writings, especially in The Metaphysics of Morals , a complicated normative ethical theory for interpreting and applying the CI to human persons in the natural world. His framework includes various levels, distinctions and application procedures. Kant, in particular, describes two subsidiary principles that are supposed to capture different aspects of the CI. The Universal Principle of Right, which governs issues about justice, rights and external acts that can be coercively enforced, holds that “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (MM 6:230). The Supreme Principle of the Doctrine of Virtue, which governs questions about moral ends, attitudes, and virtue, requires us to “act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have” (MM 6:395). These principles, in turn, justify more specific duties of right and of ethics and virtue.

In Kant’s framework, duties of right are narrow and perfect because they require or forbid particular acts, while duties of ethics and virtue are wide and imperfect because they allow significant latitude in how we may decide to fulfill them. For example, Kant claims that the duty not to steal the property of another person is narrow and perfect because it precisely defines a kind of act that is forbidden. The duty of beneficence, on the other hand, is characterized as wide and imperfect because it does not specify exactly how much assistance we must provide to others.

Even with a system of moral duties in place, Kant admits that judgment is often required to determine how these duties apply to particular circumstances. Moral laws, Kant says, “must be meticulously observed” but “they cannot, after all, have regard to every little circumstance, and the latter may yield exceptions, which do not always find their exact resolution in the laws” (V 27:574; see also CPR A133/B172; MM 6:411).

The received view is that Kant’s moral philosophy is a deontological normative theory at least to this extent: it denies that right and wrong are in some way or other functions of goodness or badness. It denies, in other words, the central claim of teleological moral views. For instance, act consequentialism is one sort of teleological theory. It asserts that the right action is that action of all the alternatives available to the agent that has the best overall outcome. Here, the goodness of the outcome determines the rightness of an action. Another sort of teleological theory might focus instead on character traits. “Virtue ethics” asserts that a right action in any given circumstance is that action a virtuous person does or would perform in those circumstances. In this case, it is the goodness of the character of the person who does or would perform it that determines the rightness of an action. In both cases, as it were, the source or ground of rightness is goodness. And Kant’s own views have typically been classified as deontological precisely because they have seemed to reverse this priority and deny just what such theories assert. Rightness, on the standard reading of Kant, is not grounded in the value of outcomes or character.

There are several reasons why readers have thought that Kant denies the teleological thesis. First, he makes a plethora of statements about outcomes and character traits that appear to imply an outright rejection of both forms of teleology. For instance, in Groundwork I, he says that he takes himself to have argued that “the objectives we may have in acting, and also our actions’ effects considered as ends and what motivates our volition, can give to actions no unconditional or moral worth…[this] can be found nowhere but in the principle of the will, irrespective of the ends that can be brought about by such action” (G 4: 400). This appears to say that moral rightness is not a function of the value of intended or actual outcomes. Kant subsequently says that a categorical imperative “declares an action to be objectively necessary of itself without reference to any purpose—that is, even without any further end” (G 4:415). A categorical imperative “commands a certain line of conduct directly, without assuming or being conditional on any further goal to be reached by that conduct” (G 4:416). These certainly appear to be the words of someone who rejects the idea that what makes actions right is primarily their relationship to what good may come of those actions, someone who rejects outright the act consequentialist form of teleology. Moreover, Kant begins the Groundwork by noting that character traits such as the traditional virtues of courage, resolution, moderation, self-control, or a sympathetic cast of mind possess no unconditional moral worth, (G 4:393–94, 398–99). If the moral rightness of an action is grounded in the value of the character traits of the person who performs or would perform it then it seems Kant thinks that it would be grounded in something of only conditional value. This certainly would not comport well with the virtue ethics form of teleology.

Second, there are deeper theoretical claims and arguments of Kant’s in both the Groundwork and in the second Critique that appear to be incompatible with any sort of teleological form of ethics. These claims and arguments all stem from Kant’s insistence that morality is grounded in the autonomy of a rational will. For instance, Kant states that “if the will seeks the law that is to determine it anywhere else than in the fitness of its maxims for its own giving of universal law…heteronomy always results” (G 4:441). If the law determining right and wrong is grounded in either the value of outcomes or the value of the character of the agent, it seems it will not be found in the fitness of the action’s maxim to be a universal law laid down by the agent’s own rational will. And Kant’s most complete treatment of value, the second Critique’s “On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason”, appears to be a relentless attack on any sort of teleological moral theory. “The concept of good and evil” he states, “must not be determined before the moral law (for which, as it would seem, this concept would have to be made the basis) but only (as was done here) after it and by means of it” (CPrR 5:63).

A number of Kant’s readers have come to question this received view, however. Perhaps the first philosopher to suggest a teleological reading of Kant was John Stuart Mill. In the first chapter of his Utilitarianism , Mill implies that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative could only sensibly be interpreted as a test of the consequences of universal adoption of a maxim. Several 20th century theorists have followed Mill’s suggestion, most notably, R. M. Hare. Hare argued that moral judgments such as “Stealing is wrong” are in fact universal prescriptions (“No stealing anywhere by anyone!”). And because they are universal, Hare argued, they forbid making exceptions. That in turn requires moral judgments to give each person’s wellbeing, including our own, equal weight. And when we give each person’s wellbeing equal weight, we are acting to produce the best overall outcome. Thus, in his view, the CI is “simply utilitarianism put into other words” (1993, p. 103). More recently, David Cummiskey (1996) has argued that Kant’s view that moral principles are justified because they are universalizable is compatible with those principles themselves being consequentialist. Indeed, Cummiskey argues that they must be: Respect for the value of humanity entails treating the interests of each as counting for one and one only, and hence for always acting to produce the best overall outcome.

There are also teleological readings of Kant’s ethics that are non-consequentialist. Barbara Herman (1993) has urged philosophers to “leave deontology behind” as an understanding of Kant’s moral theory on the grounds that the conception of practical reason grounding the Categorical Imperative is itself a conception of value. Herman’s idea is that Kant never meant to say that no value grounds moral principles. That, she argues, would imply that there would be no reason to conform to them. Instead, Kant thought the principles of rationality taken together constitute rational agency, and rational agency so constituted itself functions as a value that justifies moral action (1993, 231). Herman’s proposal thus has Kant’s view grounding the rightness of actions in rational agency, and then in turn offering rational agency itself up as a value. Both Paul Guyer and Allen Wood have offered proposals that differ from Herman’s in content, but agree on the general form of teleology that she defends as a reading of Kant. Guyer argues that autonomy itself is the value grounding moral requirements. Moral thinking consists in recognizing the priceless value of a rational agent’s autonomous will, something in light of whose value it is necessary for any rational agent to modify his behavior (1998, 22–35). And Wood argues that humanity itself is the grounding value for Kant. While the second Critique claims that good things owe their value to being the objects of the choices of rational agents, they could not, in his view, acquire any value at all if the source of that value, rational agency, itself had no value (1999, 130; see also 157–8). Finally, Rae Langton has argued that if Kant’s theory is to be thought of as an objectivistic view, we must suppose that the value of humanity and the good will are independent of simply being the objects of our rational choices. If their value thereby becomes the source of the rightness of our actions — say, our actions are right if and because they treat that self-standing value in various ways — then her reading too is teleological.

It is of considerable interest to those who follow Kant to determine which reading — teleological or deontological — was actually Kant’s, as well as which view ought to have been his. A powerful argument for the teleological reading is the motivation for Herman’s proposal: What rationale can we provide for doing our duty at all if we don’t appeal to it’s being good to do it? But a powerful argument for the deontological reading is Kant’s own apparent insistence that the authority of moral demands must come simply from their being the demands of a rational will, quite apart from the value that will may have (see Schneewind 1996; Johnson 2007, 2008; and Reath 1994). On the latter view, moral demands gain their authority simply because a rational will, insofar as you are rational, must will them. Proponents of this reading are left with the burden of answering Herman’s challenge to provide a rationale for having willed such demands, although one response may be that the very question Herman raises does not make sense because it asks, in effect, why it is rational to be rational. On the former view, by contrast, a rationale is at hand: because your will is, insofar as it is rational, good. Proponents of this former reading are, however, then left with the burden of explaining how it could be the autonomy of the will alone that explains the authority of morality.

It has seemed to a number of Kant’s interpreters that it is important to determine whether Kant’s moral philosophy was realist, anti-realist or something else (e.g. a constructivist). The issue is tricky because terms such as “realism,” “anti-realism” and “constructivism” are terms of art, so it is all too easy for interlocutors to talk past one another.

One relevant issue is whether Kant’s views commit him to the thesis that moral judgments are beliefs, and so apt to be evaluated for their truth or falsity (or are “truth apt”).

One might have thought that this question is quite easy to settle. At the basis of morality, Kant argued, is the Categorical Imperative, and imperatives are not truth apt. It makes little sense to ask whether “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” is true. But, in fact, the question is not at all easy. For one thing, moral judgments such as “Lying is wrong” might well be best analyzed according to Kant’s views as “The Categorical Imperative commands us not to lie”, and this judgment is not an imperative, but a report about what an imperative commands. Thus while at the foundation of morality there would be an imperative which is not truth apt, particular moral judgments themselves would describe what that imperative rules out and so would themselves be truth apt.

Philosophers such as R.M. Hare, however, have taken Kant’s view to be that moral judgments are not truth apt. Although on the surface moral judgments can look as if they describe a moral world, they are, as Hare reads Kant, “prescriptions”, not “descriptions”. This is not, in his view, to say that Kant’s ethics portrays moral judgments as lacking objectivity. Objectivity, according to Hare, is to be understood as universality, and the Categorical Imperative prescribes universally.

A second issue that has received considerable attention is whether Kant is a metaethical constructivist or realist.

Constructivism in metaethics is the view that moral truths are, or are determined by, the outcomes of actual or hypothetical procedures of deliberation or choice. Many who interpret Kant as a constructivist claim that his analysis of “duty” and “good will” reveals that if there are moral requirements then the agents who are bound to them have autonomy of the will (Rawls 1980; Korsgaard 1996; O’Neil 1989; Reath 2006; Hill 1989a, 1989b, 2001; Cureton 2013, 2014; Engstrom 2009). Autonomy, in this sense, means that such agents are both authors and subjects of the moral law and, as such, are not bound by any external requirements that may exist outside of our wills. Instead, we are only subject to moral requirements that we impose on ourselves through the operation of our own reason independently of our natural desires and inclinations. The common error of previous ethical theories, including sentimentalism, egoism and rationalism, is that they failed to recognize that morality presupposes that we have autonomy of the will. These theories mistakenly held that our only reasons to be moral derive from hypothetical imperatives about how to achieve given moral ends that exist independently of the activity of reason itself (for a discussion of Kant’s more specific objections to previous ethical theories, see Schneewind 2009). On these interpretations, Kant is a skeptic about arbitrary authorities, such as God, natural feelings, intrinsic values or primitive reasons that exist independently of us. Only reason itself has genuine authority over us, so we must exercise our shared powers of reasoned deliberation, thought and judgment, guided by the Categorical Imperative as the most basic internal norm of reason, to construct more specific moral requirements. Kantians in this camp, however, disagree about how this rational procedure should be characterized.

Other commentators interpret Kant as a robust moral realist (Ameriks 2003; Wood 1999; Langton 2007; Kain 2004). According to these philosophers, Kant’s theory, properly presented, begins with the claim that rational nature is an objective, agent-neutral and intrinsic value. The moral law then specifies how we should regard and treat agents who have this special status. Autonomy of the will, on this view, is a way of considering moral principles that are grounded in the objective value of rational nature and whose authority is thus independent of the exercise of our wills or rational capacities.

Some interpreters of Kant, most notably Korsgaard (1996), seem to affirm a kind of quietism about metaethics by rejecting many of the assumptions that contemporary metaethical debates rest on. For example, some of these philosophers seem not to want to assert that moral facts and properties just are the outcomes of deliberative procedures. Rather, they seem more eager to reject talk of facts and properties as unnecessary, once a wholly acceptable and defensible procedure is in place for deliberation. That is, the whole framework of facts and properties suggests that there is something we need to moor our moral conceptions to “out there” in reality, when in fact what we only need a route to a decision. Once we are more sensitive to the ethical concerns that really matter to us as rational agents, we will find that many of the questions that animate metaethicists turn out to be non-questions or of only minor importance. Others have raised doubts, however, about whether Kantians can so easily avoid engaging in metaethical debates (Hussain & Shaw 2013).

Primary Sources

Kant’s original German and Latin writings can be found in Königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), 1900–, Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Most translations include volume and page numbers to this standard Academy edition. Citations in this article do so as well. There are many English translations of Kant’s primary ethical writings. The recent Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant provides critical translations of Kant’s published works as well as selections from his correspondence and lectures. The following volumes of that series are especially relevant to his moral theory:

Practical Philosophy , translated by Mary Gregor, 1996. Includes: “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , Critique of Practical Reason , and The Metaphysics of Morals .
Religion and Rational Theology , translated by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, 1996. Includes: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Anthropology, History, and Education , translated by Robert Louden and Guenther Zoeller, 2008. Includes: “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim,” Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , and “Lectures on Pedagogy”
Lectures on Ethics , translated by Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind, 2001.
Critique of Pure Reason , translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, 1998.

Recent Commentaries on Kant’s Ethical Writings

There have been several comprehensive commentaries on the Groundwork that have been published recently, some of which also include new English translations.

Allison, Henry, 2011, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Denis, Lara, 2005, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals , Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Guyer, Paul, 2007, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader’s Guide , New York: Continuum.
Hill, Thomas & Zweig, Arnulf, 2003, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals , New York: Oxford University Press.
Höffe, Otfried (ed. ), 1989, “ Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten”: Ein Kooperativer Kommentar , Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.
Schönecker, Dieter, 2015, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Timmermann, Jens, 2007, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolff, Robert Paul, 1973, The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , New York: Harper & Row.

There are also recent commentaries on the The Metaphysics of Morals :

Andreas Trampota, Andreas, Sensen, Oliver & Timmermann, Jens (eds.), 2011, Kant’s “Tugendlehre”: A Commentary , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 343–364.
Byrd, Sharon & Hruschka, Joachim, 2010 Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gregor, Mary, 1963, The Laws of Freedom , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

The classic commentary on the Critique of Practical Reason is:

Beck, Lewis White, 1960, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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–––, 2011, Kant on Human Dignity , Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.
–––, 2018, “Respect for Human Beings with Intellectual Disabilities,” in Disability in Practice: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships , Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 72–89.
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Unit 4: How One Should Live

An Introduction to Western Ethical Thought: Aristotle, Kant, Utilitarianism

Heather Wilburn, Ph.D.

While there are many approaches to ethics in the west, here we will look at three distinct theories. Aristotle’s approach is agent-centered in that it focuses on the development of the individual, which in turn, benefits society as a whole. Kant’s approach is duty-based, which means that there are certain duties that we have as human beings and these duties are absolutely binding for us. Utilitarianism is the final approach we will address here and this is the view that consequences are the most important thing for resolving ethical dilemmas. Here we will look at the basics for two utilitarians, Bentham and J.S. Mill.

ARISTOTLE’S VIRTUE ETHICS:

For Aristotle, happiness is the only good that we desire for its own sake. All of our other goods/goals/ends are for the sake of achieving happiness. His notion of happiness is not simply a feeling of contentment or satisfaction, but an activity for human beings. This should be understood in terms of the function of human beings (activity of the soul in accordance with reason). Human beings are unique insofar as we have the capacity to reason. Thus, a human life, in order to be happy and flourish, must be lived in accordance with reason. This would mean that we have a balance between reason and emotion, in which reason is the guiding aspect.

According to Aristotle, it is the function of human beings to live a certain type of life and this life is to be an activity of the soul in accordance with reason. Therefore, the function of a human being (i.e. a good human being) is the excellent performance of these actions.

Happiness, then, for Aristotle, is an activity of the human soul in accordance with excellence and virtue and this is manifested over an entire lifetime. Happiness as the ethical end does not simply consist of moral virtue, but, rather, includes intellectual virtue as well. Complete happiness is both a contemplative and practical activity.

So, what kinds of things make us happy (or fulfilled)?

Aristotle does not exclude the various common sense notions of happiness that we might think of and, for him, it is not some single instance. Instead, it is an activity of virtue that depends on certain external and internal goods (i.e. friends, money, health, good luck, family, etc) and it includes all the various goods that allow us to flourish. It is also an activity that is undergone internally but that also benefits and depends upon one’s community.

The final good that human beings aim at is happiness. All other things that human beings aim at are subordinate goods (wealth or power) for the sake of happiness. In other words, we always choose actions that will get us closer to happiness. Happiness is not a stepping-stone to some other good. It is self-sufficient insofar as when taken by itself it makes life desirable and not lacking.

Happiness involves the ability to move toward the final end of developing oneself intellectually, emotionally, and physically as well as using the capacities that are distinctly human with excellence.

Aristotle’s ideas regarding virtue are based upon human characteristics that he found to be universal to all human beings across all times. Aristotle examines the behavior and moral judgments of men who would be considered good and virtuous as well as qualified to judge in matters of virtue. Overall, he claims that virtue is a mean and he describes the virtuous person as one whose behavior is neither excessive nor deficient in regard to desires, emotions, and appetites.

According to Aristotle, the master of any art seeks the intermediate between two extremes of excess and deficiency and the intermediate will depend upon us as individuals. For instance, eating one pound of food per day may be enough for one person while another person may need five pounds. So, the intermediate is relative to us as individuals.

The same holds for the virtues. For example, fear may be felt either too little or too much, but when we feel fear at the right time, with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is intermediate and best, which is characteristic of virtue. To miss the mark is easy and to hit it is difficult.

The good life, for Aristotle, does not consist of a series of unrelated good actions. Good acts are intentional and they lead to other good acts—they form patterns of conduct that reveal the true character of a happy/flourishing person.

Excellence, for him, is concerned with passions and actions and the character of the agent is to be revealed by the voluntary choices she makes. Human choice aims at the good, or at the perceived good, and the ability to make excellent choices requires accurate knowledge of a particular situation, good reasoning skills, and a well-developed virtuous character. Becoming a virtuous person depends upon one’s habituation and practice of the various virtues. Thus, if you want to become temperate then practice of self-moderation and if you want to become courageous then practice actions that challenge your fears.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. 2).

This means that we are not born virtuous; yet, we are born with the potential to become virtuous. The virtues must be cultivated. Virtues need to be consciously developed and sustained both by the people whose character traits they are and by others around them: parents, teachers, role models, and the community at large.

By acting ethically we express our excellence as rational creatures.

For Aristotle, becoming a virtuous person entails developing the virtues in such a way that we are developing a stable pattern of character. Practice is crucial. In other words, if we think of a character trait as a reliable disposition to act in certain ways in certain situations, we must practice or habituate ourselves to solidify that character trait. We cannot just say that we are honest, we cannot just commit to being honest—we must BE honest. Make it a habit to be honest, to not talk about people behind their backs, to not be selfish, etc. Moral character is an ongoing project.

Let’s consider a specific virtue: courage. The virtuous person is courageous, the person who is excessively fearful is a coward, and the person deficient in fear is reckless. Acting virtuously in a given situation depends to some degree upon the individual characteristics and training of the agent. Courage is always a mean with regard to things that inspire fear or confidence. However, while running into a burning building to search for survivors may be courageous for a firefighter, it is likely reckless for a physically weak person or an elderly person.

In this sense, the morality of the action also involves the examination—the rational examination—of whether or not the action was done to the right person, at the right time, and in the right way.

“Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean” (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 2, section 6).

Here are some of the virtues that Aristotle identified:

Excess: Virtue: Deficiency:

Recklessness Courage Cowardice

Unrestrained Temperate Insensible

Wasteful Generous Stingy

Vanity Humility Timid

Impatience Patience Lack of Spirit

Boastfulness Truthfulness Understatement

Clownish Witty Boring

Flattery Friendly Surly

Shameless Modesty Shyness

Here is a video summarizing some key points of virtue ethics:

UTILITARIANISM:

Utilitarianism is a widely popular approach to morality that focuses on the consequences of one’s actions. The idea put forth by Bentham and then Mill rests on the idea that the morally correct action is the one that generates the most happiness, pleasure, and/or well-being in the world OR alternatively, reduces the most pain and suffering in the world. This is a compelling approach to moral reasoning and typically comes in two basic varieties:

Act utilitarianism –This version is about the consequences of specific acts. So, in one situation A may be the morally correct option, but in another situation it might be B. It really depends upon the amount of happiness or pleasure produced or pain reduced. This version of utilitarianism is most often attributed to Bentham, who is thought to be the founder of utilitarianism. Bentham argued that to make the best decisions we must consider a few elements to determine the most optimal outcome. These elements include factors such as: scope (how many people will be affected by the action); whether or not the pleasure obtained will lead to optimal long term effects or not; and whether or not the pleasure obtained will itself produce more pleasure in the end. Essentially, Bentham thought that all pleasure was equal in a democratic sense, so, whatever brings you happiness or pleasure might differ from what brings me happiness.
Rule utilitarianism –This version is about the consequences of general rules. So, if lying tends to reduce well being in the world there ought to be a general rule against it. If persecuting innocent people results in bad outcomes, there ought to be a rule against it. Mill is the author that is thought to introduce rule utilitarianism in his attempt to defend individual rights and protect the nature of justice. As you can imagine, one major problem with Act Utilitarianism is that it would be very difficult to protect the nature of justice if persecuting an innocent person happens to bring about optimal results for the greater good. His defense of individual rights is referred to as Mill’s Harm Principle, which is located in his book, On Liberty. This states that one cannot restrict another’s behavior unless one is harming others. So, individual freedom and autonomy is important because if everyone’s rights and liberties are protected, the overall good will be promoted.

Another factor that distinguishes Mill from Bentham is that Mill does not believe that all pleasures are equal. Mill holds the view that humans have certain qualities that make us human, which ought to be the basis for the type of pleasures we pursue. This is noted in his famous quote: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool dissatisfied. And, if the fool, or the pig ,are of a different opinion it is because they only know their side of the question.”

Some Notable Attractions of Utilitarianism:

Impartiality: everyone’s interests and well-being are equally important, regardless of class, sex, race, sexual orientation, or any other arbitrary characteristic.
Justifies Conventional Moral Wisdom: can justify our basic moral beliefs, condemning the kinds of acts that we typically condemn: slavery, bigotry, and killing innocent people while commending things we typically believe are morally right: helping the poor, keeping our promises, being honest, etc. Can also explain our shared view about virtues and vices.
Conflict Resolution: one ultimate rule, so it is pretty easy to figure out which action is the right one. Take debates about the most just way to tax citizens. Should everyone be taxed the same amount, the same percentage, or should we have a graduated tax system where those who make more pay more taxes? Tough question, but from the utilitarian perspective we have one principle to work with to figure it out.
Flexibility: no moral rule is absolute; it is not a free for all or anything goes, but it is not absolute. Even Rule Utilitarianism would have to be somewhat flexible if a rule was found NOT to contribute to the greater good.
Scope of the Moral Community: First, what is a moral community? For utilitarians, entrance into the moral community only depends upon whether the entity can suffer. Animals are included here. Traditional and alternative accounts are based on things like the ability to reason, communicate, to have emotions, to be self-aware, or to be able to self-govern. However, for the utilitarian, it’s simple: if the being can experience pain and pleasure, it counts in our moral calculations.

Some Notable Difficulties with Utilitarianism:

Deliberation: lots of information may be needed to determine value of options, then weigh it all out. Mill argued that in most cases we know what is going to promote well being in the world or harm in the world. There may be rare situations where we have to stop and really think about the best option, but that’s okay; sometimes, we need to do that.
Action: Does utilitarianism require us to be saints? Perhaps it calls us beyond what we typically think of as our moral obligations.
Impartiality: Typically this is seen as a strength, but sometimes it seems partiality is okay. Utilitarians can argue that giving preferences to our loved ones is a good idea, but not because they deserve it. Instead, this justification would have to be based on what’s most beneficial.
No intrinsic wrong or right: Many of us believe that some actions are just always wrong (rape, torturing innocents, enslavement), but utilitarianism doesn’t accept this. The morality of an act always depends upon the results. Any action is permitted, provided it is necessary to prevent an even worse outcome. Sometimes our options are not good and we have to choose between two evils.
The problem of injustice: The Big Problem

If it is ever optimific to violate rights, then it seems that utilitarianism will require us to do so.

Sometimes we let the guilty go free for a benefit they can offer.
Peeping Tom cases (unknowing victims)
Persecuting innocent people for the security and peace of a community

Possible utilitarian responses to the problem of injustice:

Justice is intrinsically valuable: can we just add justice to the principle–we should maximize well being and maximize justice? Problem is when we have to choose one or the other. It also does not seem plausible to always give priority to justice.
Injustice is never optimific: This was Mill’s line of reasoning. Long term effects of injustice outweigh possible benefits.
Sometimes justice must be sacrificed: depends on the situation

Here is a video covering some key elements of consequentialism:

KANTIAN ETHICS (DEONTOLOGY):

Kant is a deontologist, which means that duty is the basis for morality. For Kant there is a strong connection between freedom and morality. The human faculty that marks our freedom is our ability to reason and to be autonomous. This means that we are able to give ourselves the moral law. This ability is what allows us to be morally responsible. If we were not capable of acting freely we could not be held accountable for our actions. So, Kant believes that it is through our capacity for reason and autonomy that we are moral agents. These capacities are also what makes each of us unique and irreplaceable. As such, Kant is a solid defender of individual rights.

Once again, we have the capacity to give ourselves the moral law, which is the process in which we determine what duties we have as moral agents. Morality, for Kant, has nothing to do with consequences; instead, it is about fulfilling our duties. So, how do we determine what duties we have? Through what Kant calls the categorical imperative–the supreme principle of morality.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

Kant’s moral theory has two formulas for the categorical imperative. So, if you’re facing a moral dilemma you must determine whether or not your action is permissible according to the formulations of the Categorical Imperative. The first formula states that we ought to act in a way such that the maxim, or principle, of our act can be willed a universal law. If your maxim cannot be universalized then that act is morally off limits. For example, if I am considering stealing a loaf of bread, I have to ask myself if my maxim can be made a universal law. This would look something like this: Is it okay for all people to steal all the time? The answer is no; the maxim itself would be self-defeating because if everyone stole all the time there would be no private property and stealing would no longer be possible. The key is to formulate maxims that everyone could support (even if some don’t). The rules are fair. So, what you are essentially doing with the test is ensuring that your maxim is logically consistent and can be used without it being self-defeating.

The second formula states that we ought to treat humanity (self and others) as an end and never as a mere means. Essentially, this entails that I treat all persons with respect and dignity; I help others achieve their goals when possible, and I avoid using them as tools or objects to further my own goals. For Kant, since humans have the capacity for autonomy and rationality, it is crucial that we treat humans with respect and dignity. With these two formulas of Kant’s categorical imperative, we can see that the focal points of his moral theory include: fairness, justice, individual rights, and consistency.

Some Notable Strengths of Kant’s Approach:

Explains why actions like slavery and rape are always wrong.
Explains why we do not like paternalistic laws or behavior.
Universal human rights are backed.
Explains why humans are morally responsible agents.

Some Notable Problems with Kant’s Approach:

Justice is important, but is it always the most important factor?
Autonomy is complicated. Many factors influence the choices we make and there may be blurred lines about whether an individual is capable of being autonomous.
Is it true that consequences don’t matter?
Moral community is restricted to those that are autonomous and rational.

Here is a video summarizing some key elements of deontology:

Now that we have laid out the theoretical approaches to morality in the Western World, let’s think about how we might apply the theories. Take a look at this video, which explains a famous ethical dilemma:

Here’s another that demonstrates ethical reasoning:

An Introduction to Western Ethical Thought: Aristotle, Kant, Utilitarianism Copyright © 2020 by Heather Wilburn, Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Virtue Ethics: Kantianism and Utilitarianism Essay

While asserting intentions and justifying deeds, humans often refer to various theories of ethics. For instance, rule-based concepts and virtue-grounded theories allow considering human behavior from different perspectives. Despite the strengths and theoretical significance of both approaches, the theories of Aristotle and Aquinas suggest more flexibility and breadth in ethics interpretation as compared to rule-based theories.

Kantianism and utilitarianism are the major rule-based or normative ethical theories although their provisions involve contradictions. Specifically, in conformity with Kantianism, people must act honestly and do the right thing, irrespective of what consequences entail for them. On the contrary, in utilitarianism, honesty is subordinate to utility. Moral obligations, duties, and rules or “maxims” are the grounds of Kantianism (Mallia 5; Marques 3). The strongest point of this theory is the following precondition: “what is right for one should be right for all” (Marques 4). Accordingly, ethical actions are connected with the fulfillment of duties and compliance with imperatives. The strengths of utilitarianism or consequentialist ethics involve the emphasis on the wellbeing of the majority and the justification of undertaken steps by their right consequences (Marques 8). This approach is widely applied in government and business decision-making to substantiate the balance between costs and benefits.

Concepts developed by Aristotle and Aquinas comprise the foundation of virtue-based ethical theories. Moral virtues, including prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, are cardinal; they are internal properties of individuals that determine their human goodness (Bright et al. 446). Aristotle-defined virtues are active. Participating in social life and striving to fulfill his/her functions perfectly, a virtuous person feels happy and satisfied. This is possible because an individual freely develop towards his/her perfection. Aristotle’s focus on mental processes that predefine a human’s moral action and choice connected with decision-making is the strong point of his theory. Aquinas emphasizes the development of virtues that correspond to the Christian traditions, such as faith, hope, and charity (Bright et al. 447). The strong point of virtue-based ethical theories is the opportunity to anticipate and improve humans’ behavior because their moral principles and standards evolve under specific conditions over time. Ethical virtues serve as a road map for human development.

Strengths of both rule-based theories and virtue-grounded approaches allow their implementation in various spheres of life. For instance, in accordance with the theory substantiated by Aristotle and Aquinas, the possession of virtues meets the long-term interests of a moral personality. The acquisition of virtues contributes to an individual’s effective interactions with others, increases self-esteem, and generates a conflict-free medium. These theories can serve as a template for behavioral studies and leadership development programs (Bright et al. 454). However, while comparing rule-based concepts and virtue-grounded theories, it is evident that rule-based theories are more pertinent to today’s social phenomena and relationships, as well as personal life, due to the establishment of ethical norms and rules. Utilitarianism with its meticulous focus on possible outcomes provides flexibility in decision-making. It “seems to be a solid way of ensuring that needs are met with consideration of the needs and desires of all stakeholders” (Marques 7). Another rule-based approach, the theory developed by Kant, laid the foundation of today’s deontological reasoning and the concept of patient safety (Mallia 6). The initiation and performance of medical studies would be much easier if researchers did not have to inform participants about research procedures and possible consequences. However, in accordance with Kantianism, voluntary and informed consent must be obtained from participants prior to any experiment. Thus, although both theoretical approaches to ethics possess their peculiar strengths, the rule-oriented theory is more applicable today.

Works Cited

Bright, David S., et al. “Reconsidering Virtue: Differences of Perspective in Virtue Ethics and the Positive Social Sciences.” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 119, no. 4, 2014, pp. 445-460.

Mallia, Pierre. “Towards an Ethical Theory in Disaster Situations.” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 18, no. 1, 2015, pp. 3-11.

Marques, Joan. “Universalism and Utilitarianism: An Evaluation of Two Popular Moral Theories in Business Decision Making.” The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, vol. 8, no. 2, 2015, pp. 1-12.

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Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory is often considered the most important modern rival to utilitarianism. Both theories are products of the same era in that their foundations were laid during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Jeremy Bentham completed his manuscript of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780. It was published in 1789, shortly after Kant’s foundational ethical works, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, which appeared in print in 1785, and the Critique of Practical Reason of 1788. A full statement of Kant’s legal and ethical theory, the Metaphysics of Morals, was to follow in 1797. Two facts about the emergence of Kantian and utilitarian ethics are particularly striking. First, while their proposals are (arguably) very different, Bentham and Kant are naturally understood as addressing the same philosophical question: What is the principle of morality, the highest standard of what human beings ought to do? Their candidates are the greatest happiness principle and the categorical imperative, respectively. Note that both moral theorists share an assumption that is by no means uncontroversial: that there is such a supreme principle. Second, even though both theories were developed during the same decade they emerged not only on opposite sides of the English Channel but completely independently of each other. Kant classified all other ethical theories known to him and dismissed them as incompatible with the autonomy of the human will, for him the only basis of an account of moral obligation, but he was oblivious of the existence of Bentham’s rival principle. Likewise, in developing his own ethical system, Bentham did not engage with Kant’s proposed categorical imperative.

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N2 - Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory is often considered the most important modern rival to utilitarianism. Both theories are products of the same era in that their foundations were laid during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Jeremy Bentham completed his manuscript of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780. It was published in 1789, shortly after Kant’s foundational ethical works, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, which appeared in print in 1785, and the Critique of Practical Reason of 1788. A full statement of Kant’s legal and ethical theory, the Metaphysics of Morals, was to follow in 1797. Two facts about the emergence of Kantian and utilitarian ethics are particularly striking. First, while their proposals are (arguably) very different, Bentham and Kant are naturally understood as addressing the same philosophical question: What is the principle of morality, the highest standard of what human beings ought to do? Their candidates are the greatest happiness principle and the categorical imperative, respectively. Note that both moral theorists share an assumption that is by no means uncontroversial: that there is such a supreme principle. Second, even though both theories were developed during the same decade they emerged not only on opposite sides of the English Channel but completely independently of each other. Kant classified all other ethical theories known to him and dismissed them as incompatible with the autonomy of the human will, for him the only basis of an account of moral obligation, but he was oblivious of the existence of Bentham’s rival principle. Likewise, in developing his own ethical system, Bentham did not engage with Kant’s proposed categorical imperative.

AB - Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory is often considered the most important modern rival to utilitarianism. Both theories are products of the same era in that their foundations were laid during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Jeremy Bentham completed his manuscript of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780. It was published in 1789, shortly after Kant’s foundational ethical works, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, which appeared in print in 1785, and the Critique of Practical Reason of 1788. A full statement of Kant’s legal and ethical theory, the Metaphysics of Morals, was to follow in 1797. Two facts about the emergence of Kantian and utilitarian ethics are particularly striking. First, while their proposals are (arguably) very different, Bentham and Kant are naturally understood as addressing the same philosophical question: What is the principle of morality, the highest standard of what human beings ought to do? Their candidates are the greatest happiness principle and the categorical imperative, respectively. Note that both moral theorists share an assumption that is by no means uncontroversial: that there is such a supreme principle. Second, even though both theories were developed during the same decade they emerged not only on opposite sides of the English Channel but completely independently of each other. Kant classified all other ethical theories known to him and dismissed them as incompatible with the autonomy of the human will, for him the only basis of an account of moral obligation, but he was oblivious of the existence of Bentham’s rival principle. Likewise, in developing his own ethical system, Bentham did not engage with Kant’s proposed categorical imperative.

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Moral Philosophy According to Immanuel Kant

Kantian Ethics in a Nutshell

Philosophical Theories & Ideas
Major Philosophers

A Problem for the Enlightenment

Three responses to the enlightenment problem, the problem with utilitarianism, the good will, duty vs. inclination, knowing your duty, the ends principle, kant’s concept of enlightenment.

Ph.D., Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A., Philosophy, McGill University
B.A., Philosophy, University of Sheffield

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is generally considered to be one of the most profound and original philosophers who ever lived. He is equally well known for his metaphysics–the subject of his "Critique of Pure Reason"—and for the moral philosophy set out in his "Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals" and "Critique of Practical Reason" (although "Groundwork" is the far easier of the two to understand).

To understand Kant’s moral philosophy, it's crucial to be familiar with the issues that he, and other thinkers of his time, were dealing with. From the earliest recorded history, people’s moral beliefs and practices were grounded in religion. Scriptures, such as the bible and the Quran, laid out moral rules that believers thought to be handed down from God: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery , and so on. The fact that these rules supposedly came from a divine source of wisdom gave them their authority. They were not simply somebody’s arbitrary opinion, they were God's opinion, and as such, they offered humankind an objectively valid code of conduct.

Moreover, everyone had an incentive to obey these codes. If you “walked in the ways of the Lord,” you would be rewarded, either in this life or the next. If you violated the commandments, you'd be punished. As a result, any sensible person brought up in such a faith would abide by the moral rules their religion taught.

With the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries that led to the great cultural movement known as the Enlightenment, these previously accepted religious doctrines were increasingly challenged as faith in God, scripture, and organized religion began to decline among the intelligentsia—that is, the educated elite. Nietzsche famously described this shift away from organized religion as “the death of God.”

This new way of thinking created a problem for moral philosophers: If religion wasn’t the foundation that gave moral beliefs their validity, what other foundation could there be? If there is no God—and therefore no guarantee of cosmic justice ensuring that the good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished—why should anyone bother trying to be good? Scottish moral philosopher Alisdair MacIntrye called this “the Enlightenment problem.” The solution moral philosophers needed to come up with was a secular (non-religious) determination of what morality was and why we should strive to be moral.

Social Contract Theory— One answer to the Enlightenment Problem was pioneered by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who argued that morality was essentially a set of rules that human beings agreed upon amongst themselves in order to make living with one another possible. If we didn’t have these rules—many of which took the form of laws enforced by the government—life would be absolutely horrific for everyone.
Utilitarianism— Utilitarianism, another attempt to give morality a non-religious foundation, was pioneered by thinkers including David Hume (1711-1776) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1842). Utilitarianism holds that pleasure and happiness have intrinsic value. They are what we all want and are the ultimate goals that all our actions aim toward. Something is good if it promotes happiness, and it is bad if it produces suffering. Our basic duty is to try to do things that add to the amount of happiness and/or reduce the amount of misery in the world.
Kantian Ethics— Kant had no time for Utilitarianism. He believed in placing the emphasis on happiness the theory completely misunderstood the true nature of morality. In his view, the basis for our sense of what is good or bad, right or wrong, is our awareness that human beings are free, rational agents who should be given the respect appropriate to such beings—but what exactly does that entail?

In Kant’s view, the basic problem with utilitarianism is that it judges actions by their consequences. If your action makes people happy, it’s good; if it does the reverse, it’s bad. But is this actually contrary to what we might call moral common sense? Consider this question: Who is the better person, the millionaire who gives $1,000 to charity in order to score points with his Twitter following or the minimum-wage worker who donates a day’s pay to charity because she thinks it's her duty to help the needy?

If consequences are all that matter, then the millionaire’s action is technically the "better" one. But that’s not how the majority of people would see the situation. Most of us judge actions more for their motivation than by their consequences. The reason is obvious: the consequences of our actions are often out of our control, just as the ball is out of the pitcher’s control once it's left his hand. I could save a life at the risk of my own, and the person I save could turn out to be a serial killer. Or I could accidentally kill someone in the course of robbing them, and in doing so might unwittingly save the world from a terrible tyrant.

Kant’s "Groundwork " opens with the line: “The only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will.” Kant’s argument for this belief is quite plausible. Consider anything you think of in terms of being "good"—health, wealth, beauty, intelligence, and so on. For each of these things, you can also likely imagine a situation in which this so-called good thing is not good after all. For instance, a person can be corrupted by their wealth. The robust health of a bully makes it easier for him to abuse his victims. A person’s beauty may lead her to become vain and fail to develop emotional maturity. Even happiness is not good if it is the happiness of a sadist torturing unwilling victims.

By contrast, goodwill, says Kant, is always good—in all circumstances. What, exactly, does Kant mean by goodwill? The answer is fairly simple. A person acts out of goodwill when they do what they do because they think it is their duty—when they act from a sense of moral obligation.

Obviously, we don’t perform every little action from a sense of obligation. Much of the time, we're simply following our inclinations—or acting out of self-interest. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, however, no one deserves credit for pursuing their own interests. It comes naturally to us, just as it comes naturally to every animal.

What is remarkable about human beings, though, is that we can, and sometimes do, perform an action from purely moral motives—for example, when a soldier throws himself on a grenade, sacrificing his own life to save the lives of others. Or less dramatically, I pay back a friendly loan as promised even though payday isn't for another week and doing so will leave me temporarily short of cash.

In Kant’s view, when a person freely chooses to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, their action adds value to the world and lights it up, so to speak, with a brief glow of moral goodness.

Saying that people should do their duty from a sense of duty is easy—but how are we supposed to know what our duty is? Sometimes we may find ourselves facing moral dilemmas in which it's not obvious which course of action is morally correct.

According to Kant, however, in most situations are duty is obvious. If we're uncertain, we can work out the answer by reflecting on a general principle that Kant calls the “Categorical Imperative.” This, he claims, is the fundamental principle of morality and all other rules and precepts can be deduced from it.

Kant offers several different versions of this categorical imperative. One runs as follows: “Act only on that maxim that you can will as a universal law.”

What this means, basically, is that we should only ask ourselves, How would it be if everyone acted the way I’m acting? Could I sincerely and consistently wish for a world in which everyone behaved this way? According to Kant, if our action is morally wrong, the answers to those questions would be no. For instance, suppose I’m thinking of breaking a promise. Could I wish for a world in which everyone broke their promises when keeping them was inconvenient? Kant argues that I could not want this, not least because in such a world no one would make promises since everyone would know that a promise meant nothing.

Another version of the Categorical Imperative that Kant offers states that one should “always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to one’s own ends." This is commonly referred to as the “ends principle.” While similar in a way to the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," it puts the onus for following the rule on humankind rather than accepting the strictures of divine influence.

The key to Kant’s belief regarding what makes humans moral beings is the fact that we are free and rational creatures. To treat someone as a means to your own ends or purposes is to not respect this fact about them. For instance, if I get you to agree to do something by making a false promise, I am manipulating you. Your decision to help me is based on false information (the idea that I’m going to keep my promise). In this way, I have undermined your rationality. This is even more obvious if I steal from you or kidnap you in order to claim a ransom.

Treating someone as an end, by contrast, involves always respecting the fact that they are capable of free rational choices which may be different from the choices you wish them to make. So if I want you to do something, the only moral course of action is to explain the situation, explain what I want, and let you make your own decision.

In his famous essay “What is Enlightenment?” Kant defines the principle as “man’s emancipation from his self-imposed immaturity.” What does this mean, and what does it have to do with his ethics?

The answers go back to the problem of religion no longer providing a satisfactory foundation for morality. What Kant calls humanity’s “immaturity” is the period when people did not truly think for themselves, and instead, typically accepted moral rules handed down to them by religion, tradition, or by authorities such as the church, overlord, or king. This loss of faith in previously recognized authority was viewed by many as a spiritual crisis for Western civilization. If “God is dead, how do we know what is true and what is right?"

Kant’s answer was that people simply had to work those things out for themselves. It wasn't something to lament, but ultimately, something to celebrate. For Kant, morality was not a matter of subjective whim set forth in the name of god or religion or law based on the principles ordained by the earthly spokespeople of those gods. Kant believed that “the moral law”—the categorical imperative and everything it implies—was something that could only be discovered through reason. It was not something imposed on us from without. Instead, it's a law that we, as rational beings, must impose on ourselves. This is why some of our deepest feelings are reflected in our reverence for the moral law, and why, when we act as we do out of respect for it—in other words, from a sense of duty—we fulfill ourselves as rational beings.

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Essay on Kantian Ethics, Utilitarianism, And Virtue Ethics

A person’s actions impacts their peers, communities, and the world. Many people aspire to be “good” people, and hope to put good out into the world. One can define “good” in many different ways, but depending on an individual’s ethical code, they may or may not be considered good. The three major ethical theories which we addressed are Kantian Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics. A strong argument could be made for each theory, but one sticks out as the best and most reasonable theory of ethics. Kantian Ethics is the best universal theory of ethics, as it allows for individual rights and is specific nough to follow.

Kantian ethics stresses individual rights, reason, and motivation for actions. Immanuel Kant believed that each person should be valued, and that we should recognize that everyone has their own opinions, motivations, and maxims. No person is less valuable than another, and nobody should be used by another. All decisions are supposed to be made using reason, and the focus of decision making is on the motivation. More importantly, Kantian ethics can be used in hindsight to evaluate if a person made the right decision. If the motivation or the past action was right, the action should theoretically be ethical.

According to Kant, the most important motivation for action is duty. The two most important considerations leading to a decision is how you are treating others, and if it is your duty to act. The “golden rule” is essentially based on Kantianism: do onto others as you would want done to yourself. Everyone wants to be treated as important individuals, and nobody wants to be used by another without benefit to themselves. Although not identical ideologies, Kant’s similar theory to the Golden Rule s called the “Categorical Imperative. We teach our children how we hope our society will act in the future. Since Kantianism is essentially equivalent to what we teach our children in grade school, it seems like the most universally accepted theory today. Kantianism being the most widely accepted theory of ethics does not necessarily make it the most perfect theory, but it does show that the majority of people believe it is the most logical way of moral evaluation. Kantian ethics has solutions to many of the issues which come along with the other mentioned theories.

Utilitarianism says that any decision made should weigh the total happiness or sadness that will come from a decision, and act on whatever produces the most pleasure. This seems to make sense, but it allows for individuals to use others for the pleasure of themselves or the masses. For example, any system which allows for oppression of a minority could be supported by utilitarianism because the total pain of the minority could be outweighed by the pleasure of the majority. Although the total pleasure may be higher, it discounts the value of an individual’s rights.

Kantian ethics solves this issue by saying that all individuals have rights, and no individual should be used as a “means” to another’s “end. ” In other words, nobody should be used to achieve the goal of another against their own will. Kantianism says all individuals should be considered themselves as an “end,” meaning all people have their own personal motivations and maxims. Precision of decision making also makes Kantian the strongest theory. Utilitarianism can be difficult and takes consideration of everyone who may be impacted, and not all data or knowledge s always available to the decision maker.

This makes quick decision making nearly impossible, and makes moral evaluation difficult, since it is rarely possible to collect or quantify the amount of pleasure or pain inflicted across an impacted group. Virtue Ethics can also be difficult since there is no actual “code;” instead, people either have to be born with virtue, or take after another individual who has it. Clearly, there can be some confusion with this and even those with virtue may not always make the right decisions. With Kantian Ethics, one can simply onsider a few questions: Am I using anyone as a means?

Am I motivated to do this? Kantian ethics primarily focuses on motivation for making a decision. If the motivation is right, then the decision should be good. Duty is a major theme in Kantian ethics. Any decision can easily be made by considering whether you feel motivated to do this task. Further, if it is your duty, you should feel strongly motivated to do something. Duty should be motivated by a sense of moral obligation, not self-interest. For example, when you make a promise to a person, it becomes your duty to fulfill that promise.

According to Utilitarianism, it would be acceptable to break this promise if it would produce more pleasure. This does not seem morally acceptable, since a promise is binding; if an individual regularly broke promises, that person would not be considered moral or trustworthy in the future. Since motivation and reason are most prominent in Katianism, emotions about a situation are left out of the decision making process. The moral obligation should always come before a self- interested motivation, so if breaking the promise would provide self-benefit, the duty should override this opposing motivation.

This prevents an individual from making decisions which would benefit themselves and from using others as a means to an end. The strongest objections to Kantian ethics include moral absolutism, conflicts of duty, and lack of emotion. Moral absolutism means Kantian ethics has a specific set of rules which should be followed no matter what the consequences may be. It is an issue, as no set of rules should be blindly followed without reason, but in a way highlights a benefit of Kantian ethics. This issue applies most to Kantianism compared to the other two theories because it is the most specific.

Given that a person uses their reasoning ability, Kantian ethics can never truly be “blindly followed,” since reason would prevent anyone from making “blind” decisions. For example, consider if someone hiding Jews during the Holocaust was asked by the Gestapo “Are you hiding Jews? ” In one way, it is the person’s moral duty to tell the truth. On the other hand, it is their moral duty to preserve their own life and the lives of the people they are hiding. This shows Kantian ethics is not always a clear choice like “do not lie ever,” but sometimes we must use reason to onsider which option is the highest duty.

Conflicts of duty is another issue with Kantian ethics. If someone feels they have two separate duties which prevent them from doing the other, this presents a problem. For example, if you ask a person what they have in their basement, and you promise not to tell anyone, it is now your duty not to tell anyone. If they tell you it is a nuclear bomb which they are planning to drop on a large city, it is also your duty to prevent them from doing so. It seems best to use Utilitarianism in this case, since there is a clear discrepancy in pleasure between the ecisions.

Kantian ethics could still be used here, because it is now time to use reason and motivation to decide between the two duties. Most people would reason that saving the city is more important than the promise made. Lack of emotion could be proposed as an issue with Kantian ethics, since it is so focused on motivation and reason, and emotion is essentially ignored in decision making. Emotion seems like it should be considered in decision making, since there can be such strong sensations associated with certain decisions. Making a decision against your own emotions seems ike it would be difficult to do.

On the other hand, this may be why it is best to do so. Acting on emotions is more likely to be selfish and it is more likely you will oppress some party and help another. For example, most people are emotional towards their loved-ones. They want their own family and friends to succeed. If decisions were made from an emotional standpoint, it may seem to make sense to use other people who you care for less in order to benefit your own family. Kantian ethics prevents this type of action from happening. Also, it seems difficult to say we hould not act emotionally towards those we love.

In a loving relationship, one would expect two people to have an emotional connection and to treat one-another differently than they may treat others. This seems to be left out of the equation with Kantian ethics. To rebut that argument, it seems that ethics and an emotional relationship do not need to be completely interconnected. An emotional relationship includes things other than ethics, and ethics includes things outside of emotional relationships. Therefore, Kantian ethics can still exist in relationships, as long as the emotion is put aside when valuating moral situations.

As compared to the other major ethical theories, Kantianism gives the most value to human rights. It also is the most precise, allowing decision making to be simpler. Where Utilitarianism allows for immoral use and potential abuse of others as a means to an end, Kantian ethics considers each person for who they are. Where virtue ethics gives vague guidelines and makes some people seem naturally “better” or “more virtuous” than others, Kantian ethics gives a fairly simple code of ethics which can be followed by asking one’s self a few simple questions.

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Business Ethics. Utilitarianism and Kantianism

Utilitarianism, as a theory, determines the moral/ ethical soundness of an act or lack thereof, on the basis of related consequences. In the strictest sense of utilitarian thought, an act is moral if it results to the greatest good of the greatest number of people (Melden, 2008, 56). It has a similar perspective to the consequential theory, in that they both judge an act on the basis of the good that comes out of it. For instance, it would be morally right if a bus driver overran a child crossing the road if avoiding him would have endangered the lives of several passengers. In the corporate world, utilitarianism comes into play when managers make economically sound decisions, but in the process overlook or ignore some moral considerations. An example is when a bribe is given to clinch a lucrative contract. Bribery is wrong, but the action is justified since the company makes a profit from the contract and at the same time, creates employment opportunities in terms of the manpower that will be hired.

However, some extreme interpretations of utilitarianism border absurdity, thus sparking the argument on how good a result should be to justify action. For instance, we know that the war against terrorism portends the greatest good to all mankind. Thus, an arms manufacturer finds justification in supplying governments with weapons to protect the majority by killing minority terrorists but nonetheless minting profits in the process. Utilitarianism, therefore, fails when it values profits regardless of the means, and favors the majority at the expense of the minority. Take for example a manager at Lexington, whose company has been contracted by the US government to supply ammunition to be used in the infamous war against terrorism. Good business manners determine that he grabs the deal in the best interests of the shareholder. On the same breadth, his conscience is pricked by the knowledge that his actions, i.e. accepting the contract, would aid in the termination of human life. By rule utilitarianism, this is disrespect of human life and other people’s rights (Chryssides and Kaler, 2009 p 135). How many innocent Afghan children are going to die as ‘collateral damage’ in the process? If hauling a few missiles in a crowded place would eliminate Taliban fugitives, why not sell them to our good government fighting the bad boys? But is it morally right? And there lies the dilemma of utilitarian principles (Frederick 2002, p 27).

The Kantian ethics posit that an act is morally provided it is informed by reason and noble motive (Kant, 2001 p 138). It departs from the utilitarian paradigm by emphasizing the act itself rather than the consequences (Cory 2004, p 17). It appeals to the human capacity to make rational decisions, which reflect universally acceptable rationales. In this case, none of the above actions would qualify as moral. By reason, you should not kill knowingly even if the worth of the kid’s life pales against sixty adult passengers, or the extinction of a few al Qaeda radicals will make the world a safe place to live. The other tenet of Kantian thought is that emotions and passion are not grounds for doing a moral act. Accordingly, it is not moral to donate to the Red Cross because you were moved by TV pictures of emaciated and starving children in Darfur. But it would be right if giving out is a humanly act that by reason, all people of means should pursue. So weeping at funerals out of emotion is not morally right after all, right?

In matters business-wise, Kantianism is reflected in the wider aspect of corporate responsibility, where companies donate to charities in times of humanitarian crisis (Bowie 1999, p 124). Why did organizations contribute to the Haitian cause? Was it because of the moving sights of starving victims or purely on principle? But perhaps more apt is the application of the shareholder model of business management that significantly appeals to reason and respectively, finds justification in Kantianism. According to the theory, the role of corporations is to maximize profits for investors at whatever costs. Accordingly, managers should make decisions that direct all the company’s efforts to the realization of profits regardless of the means or consequences (Fredrick 2002, p 16). Let’s take the issue of industrial pollution and environmental conservation. It is widely accepted that treating industrial pollutants before discharging them into the environment helps to reduce environmental pollution and by extension, the risks associated with global warming. However, the treatment of discharges translates into higher operating expenses that eat into the company’s profits. So what would a manager do when faced with this dilemma? Kantianism determines that skipping the process is justified by good reason: addressing the shareholder’s interests of maximizing profits. At the same time, it is reasonably sound to argue that reducing profits to save the environment is equally a good cause. Thus, Kantianism’s major shortcoming is its weakness of interpretation, which makes it difficult to determine the more reasonable reason when you have two options.

The theories of utilitarianism and Kantianism play a central role in the decisions making processes that have a bearing on business ethics. Advertising decisions are one area of business marketing that reflects business practices versus ethical considerations. Advertisement as a business promotion strategy aims to persuade, woo and convince consumers to purchase the advertised product (Jones and Parker 2005, p 165). However, the law determines that the consumer should not be misled through misinformation or exaggerations. Thus, a claim on a drug seal-like ‘Cures Ulcers Immediately’ should be true and probable. At the same time, the law cushions the advertiser if sufficient information has been provided to help the consumer make an informed decision. However, “Lose Weight for 20 Dollars” on a diet product does not hold the manufacturer liable if the desired results are not realized. It remains that the principle of interpretation applies, and the manufacturer did not specifically state how many pounds of weight to lost within a given period of time. Other additional information like ‘terms and conditions’ apply to protect the company from legal liability. Regardless, even when the law protects a company against misinformation, utilitarianism will guide a company’s decisions in protecting consumer rights.

In workplaces, the theoretical approaches define how individuals interpret their actions, especially in relation to personal use of company property (Rendtorff 2005, p 91). Consider a situation where Lonnie, a management trainee, discovers that her supervisor Mark has pirated the company’s auditing software for personal use. He is working part-time for other firms, which is affecting his present job since he leaves early and reports late. He justifies his actions that the management has let him down by denying him a partnership, despite his seventeen years of service. He is faced with extra bills in school fees for his son and medical expenses which he could have afforded if he became a partner. Lonnie dreads to report the matter for fear of negative reports from her boss. Neither could she quit her job as it will be hard to get another equally paying job. There is also her husband’s business and so she can’t move to another town in search of a job. Finally, Mark confronts her with a sense of guilt by pointing out that she too had been stealing from the company by using the company phone for personal calls and computers to copy documents for her church. So she lets the matter rest as a compromise.

Lonnie is confronted with three ethical issues: using the company phone and computer for matters unrelated to her job and most importantly, withholding information about Jack’s conduct. In so doing, she becomes an accomplice in his crime and an unreliable employee. The church, on its part, has illegally benefited from the company’s resources without the latter’s knowledge. This will tarnish its image and put it in conflict with the company.

Lastly, the company’s management has reneged on its agreement to offer Jack a partnership at the end of the ten-year period. This is a breach of trust between the employer and employee, which undermines a company’s reputation. It has a negative financial impact on Jack, who will not be able to pay for his son’s university education and personal medical bills.

From a utilitarianism perspective, some of the involved stakeholders’ actions could be justified as sound. It holds that an action is good if it achieves desirable and profitable results for the greatest number of people. Its advantages in this regard are the utilization of resources to benefit more people. Mark is operating on this line since the pirated software will enable him to start his own company and generate more income to take care of his son’s education and medical bills. By keeping the software secret, it is not helping many people as it would if it is put into wider use, just as Mark is doing. Technically, no loss is incurred by the company by the piracy. Similarly, leaving early has the advantage of serving many clients and therefore, utilizing time for the common good of his part-time employers and his family. Despite the fact that he is using pirated software, his clients receive cheap services which reduces their operating expenses.

Lonnie’s actions are also good despite failing on her responsibility to report matters that affect the company. She has saved on her expenses by using the company’s phone. She has also contributed to society by helping the church using the company’s computer. By letting her do the job, the church had saved money that could be used in other projects. By withholding information, she has protected her job, and so will be able to help her husband in paying their mortgage bills. Additionally, reporting the matter could possibly see jack lose his job, which could have devastating financial consequences on him. His son will not go to university and he won’t pay his medical bills. By seeking the common good, the positive side of it is that the company retains its two employees and a possible conflict is avoided if the matter was reported. It is a cognitive shortcut (Bazerma, 2005, p 3) that people use to avoid conflicts.

A utilitarian approach by the management could have avoided the actions Mark. If the management had cared for the greatest good, it could not have denied Mark a partnership. By acting otherwise, they have jeopardized his efforts to educate his son and meet other pressing needs. In addition, they have caused him to adopt unconventional means to compensate for his loss. Consequently, he is less committed to his job; he has lost his loyalty and cost the company commitment of services by one of its longest-serving and reliable employees.

Nonetheless, a utilitarian approach is equally damaging to involved parties. By seeking the greatest benefit, Mark violates his responsibility to guard company secrets. By coming to work late and leaving earlier affects the company for denying its value for the wages it pays. In this light, utilitarianism has the shortcomings of overlooking the long-term consequences of management decisions. The pursuit of the common good can compromise other ethical aspects such as responsibility, loyalty, and integrity. The clients that Mark serves have acted unethically by utilizing another company’s resources and employees. Similarly, Mark has breached his agreement to keep the company’s secrets from outsiders. As a senior employee, he displayed irresponsibility by leaving work at will to pursue personal interests. For these reasons, utilitarianism promotes a tendency for individuals to renege on agreements, which can hurt the other party.

Kantianism appeals to the use of reason to make decisions. The dilemma, however, is that it is not established yet whether good reasoning gives rise to a sense of ethics, or it is ethics that informs good reasoning. For instance, why do you thank the Human Resource Manager after signing your appointment letter? Is it because you feel somebody has done you a favor, or because it is simply a matter of courtesy? But then, how honestly will you thank the secretary who tells you “Sorry sir, your application was not successful?” Thank you indeed!

And now closer to the issue at hand, late last year, we decided with a couple of friends to let September 11 just pass without our knowledge. In that case, a sober mind was our last concern: so on 10 th at midnight, we sought refuge in a club. At dawn when we were leaving, we bumped into a coursemate staggering down the staircase. We offered a lift and drove her home. Two months later, she sent an invitation to a party for an association she chairs. She stated: “I think I still owe you guys for that lift. I’ll be honored to have you at my club’s bash. Please purpose to be there. Once again, thanks a lot.” Well, we attended, but it never occurred to any of us that it had any ethical implications.

Now that I think about it, I’m tempted to question the basis of her decision to pick on us. It was not that she was dying to have her best friends, right? That we were acquainted is obvious, that we would feature in her “mind’s list’ of possible invitees is probable: but that she would actually invite us; ridiculous! Yet she did. It means then that some other factors, most likely of personal concern informed her show of ‘friendship’. Why do I now question it? Because by this invitation, somebody else more deserving, was excluded. In light of Kantianism, her decision is not a reflection of rationality that would be acceptable to everybody, anywhere, anytime. She did what other members would have opposed.

So much of the detour: back to our question. I was a leader of a team that awarded a lucrative deal to a contractor firm. A promotion followed for the team members and we decided to have a celebratory luncheon. Then an executive of the beneficiary company felt generous enough to reward our good job with an unlimited indulgence of our appetites. He had dropped a message that in fact, he had left his credit card with the owner of the restaurant and that we should feel free in having a great time with him. To this, we could have either agreed and compromise our integrity, or turn the offer down and offend our host and by extension, undermine future relations between the two organizations. To make an ethical decision then called for a critical analysis of the situation in the context of Kantian thought.

The theory of Kantianism stipulates that society desires the best for all members. By individual decisions, other people outside one’s immediate circumstances are affected, either negatively or positively. It is at this point that Immanuel Kant appeals to our reasoning capacity to make positive judgments in terms of their implications. On the whole, our decisions should be acceptable within the wider spectrum of society.

The executive’s show of generosity is subject to many Kantian interpretations. It could be an indirect way of giving something small for awarding his company the contract. This is so especially if the contract was subjected to competitive bidding. If such be the case, then the offer is unacceptable on grounds of integrity on our part and the organization we represented. Not to offend him, regardless, a gentle refusal to the effect that we’d already lunched and we were grateful anyway could have settled it down. It then occurs to me that were it not for the decision to celebrate our promotion, we wouldn’t be in a hotel and a fictitious excuse would have been a very tempting escape route; which amounts to lying.

Perhaps the executive comes from a culture where dishing out goodies in this manner is the standard way of saying thank you, and therefore he does not see any harm in his act. However, culture is too narrow a concept to encompass the principles of Kantian thinking (Kor and Mahoney 2001, p 235). What we aspire for are those general qualities of corporate management that reflect the values and norms of conduct and behavior informed by rational reasoning. It would be inappropriate therefore to accept the offer on these grounds, for only in total disregard of other people’s rationale will such a decision be justified. Nevertheless, the insight provided by Kantianism is determining whether the efforts of my staff in awarding the contract involved some sort of underground lobbying and canvassing before the vote. Thus, the theory provides a rational basis for judging and evaluating situations before taking an action (Fernando 2005, p 34).

On the other hand, you realize we will be in the mess already if we smoothed the way before the deal. Of what consequence then will a decision either way be? By Kantian thought, good reason will determine that a wrong has already been committed, and there is nothing subsequent good conduct can reverse. In this sense, this theory in relation to business conduct is limited in that it justifies further wrong doing on ‘reasons’ of previous actions. For, indeed, it wouldn’t make any ethical sense to seal a dubious deal and then refuse a disguised kickback in the pretense of ethics. If reason justifies a wrong, then Kantianism fails in providing alternative avenues that are acceptable despite the fact that they defy logic.

Good logic could cast doubt on the executive’s decision of leaving his card with a restaurant owner. It reveals the unethical nature of the whole arrangement. Apparently, has already informed somebody that some top bigwigs of a certain organization helped his company grab a contract worth a staggering value, and in reciprocation, would like to make them stagger with delicacies. Does that say anything about our organization? A lot: that the way to its boardroom is via the stomachs of its management (Janes 2009, p 134). That is not a virtue worth being proud of, east of all an ethical one. On this score then, Kantianism helps business managers in making informed decisions in relation to dealings and associations with business partners.

The second point is the question of having a great time on his account. Whose money is the accountant being extravagant with? It doesn’t seem quite probable that an employee would put his wallet at the service of his employer to massage the appetites of people with high connections. I notice that our friend was not a general manager, let alone a public relations officer. It is unclear in what capacity he played the role of fostering inter-organizational relations (Wernerfelt 1984, p 173). It reveals a lot that his position affords him the capacity to do what he is attempting to do; sprinkle a few coins here and there to influence decisions. In the corporate world, this would be a very unethical trend to promote for institutional managers. It is incompatible with business practices anywhere in the world. Besides, it projects a company’s image and character as corrupt. Once again, Kantianism provides a rationale for avoiding unethical relations between corporate players by acting in ways that agree with the principles of business ethics (Rendtorff 2009, p 119).

So what if the whole process was transparent and the executive’s intentions are noble? Well, I worked with ‘a staff’, meaning a number of company employees. It does not therefore justify just the four of us to take the credit. At the same time, it won’t be acceptable to demand a package for the entire organization. The former shows selfishness and the latter greed and ingratitude. And yet, we can’t turn the offer down outright without offending our benefactor, since the services have already been paid for. It is at this point that reason alone, i.e. giving a logical excuse for acting either way will not serve the involved parties’ best interests. However, it should be emphasized that the purpose of business ethics is to promote acceptable corporate practices (Machan and Chesher 2002, p 188). If doing the right thing is the criterion of conduct, then reason alone is not sufficient in informing decisions since some acceptable actions are somewhat irrational. In this case, turning the offer down is the most ethical thing to do. But then, its logic may be lost to our benefactor since people do not always share rationales. One of Kantianism’s limitations, it turns out, is its inability to solve dilemma situations. Nonetheless, a utilitarian approach will solve such a situation since it avoids selfish interests. Accordingly, a consideration of the greatest numb of people will suggest that the gift be dedicated to a charity project.

In conclusion, I take Kantian ethics to be more suitable in determining human conduct. The emphasis on reason subjects all actions to rational scrutiny before they are acted out (Machan and Chesher 2002, p 41). Rationality determines what would be acceptable universally, i.e. what anybody else of sound mind would have preferred, implying doing what is best for all people. It at once embraces the positive elements of utilitarianism, while at the same time judging actions within the wider scheme of things. As Emmanuel Kant once said, “We have to rely on ourselves: we become our own author….our own authority, and we have to use and appeal to our capacity to reason and think” (Kant 2001 p 139).

Bazerman, M. H. “The Dangers of Compromise,” In The Mind of the Negotiator . EBSCO Industries, Inc, 2005, 3. Web.

Bowie, N, E. Business ethics: a Kantian perspective, Blackwell Publishers, New York, 1999, 124

Catherine L., Descriptions of Ethical Theories and Principles . North Carolina: Davidson College, Dept of Biology, 2002,Web.

Chryssides, G. D., Kaler, John H. An Introduction to Business Ethics: Cengage Learning EMEA, New York, 2009, 135.

Cory, J, Activist Business Ethics. New York : Springer, 2004, 17.

Fernando, A. C., Business Ethics: An Indian Perspective, Pearson Education India, New Delhi, 2009, 34.

Fredrick, R. A companion to business ethics, New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, 16, 27.

Janes, I., Performance Management. In Financial Management . EBSCO Industries, Inc., 2009. 134. Web.

Jones, C and, Parker, M. For business ethics . New York: Routledge, 2005, 165.

Kant I. Lectures on ethics . London: Cambridge University Press. 2001, 138-139.

Kor T. Y., Mahoney J, T. Edith Penrose’s (1959) Contribution to the Resource-based View of Strategic Management . Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2001, 235.

Machan, T, R., Chesher, J, A primer on business ethics : Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2002, 41,138,188.

Melden, A. I., Ethical Theories . New York: Read Books, 2008, 56.

Rendtorff, N., Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporation, Copenhagen Business School Press DK, New York, 2009, 91.

Wernerfelt, B. The Resource-based View of the Firm. Strategic Management Journal ; 5, (2), 1984, 171–180

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Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes of actions and choices.

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism.

Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the only moral framework that can be used to justify military force or war. It is also the most common approach to moral reasoning used in business because of the way in which it accounts for costs and benefits.

However, because we cannot predict the future, it’s difficult to know with certainty whether the consequences of our actions will be good or bad. This is one of the limitations of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism also has trouble accounting for values such as justice and individual rights. For example, assume a hospital has four people whose lives depend upon receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a liver. If a healthy person wanders into the hospital, his organs could be harvested to save four lives at the expense of one life. This would arguably produce the greatest good for the greatest number. But few would consider it an acceptable course of action, let alone the most ethical one.

So, although utilitarianism is arguably the most reason-based approach to determining right and wrong, it has obvious limitations.

Related Terms

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges an action’s moral correctness by its consequences.

Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy studies what is right and wrong, and related philosophical issues.

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning is the branch of philosophy that attempts to answer questions with moral dimensions.

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Kantian Ethics: Duty and the Categorical Imperative

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Conflict and Ethical Dilemmas

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An Introduction to Western Ethical Thought: Aristotle, Kant, Utilitarianism

ARISTOTLE’S VIRTUE ETHICS:

So, what kinds of things make us happy (or fulfilled)?

UTILITARIANISM:

Some Notable Attractions of Utilitarianism:

Some Notable Difficulties with Utilitarianism:

KANTIAN ETHICS (DEONTOLOGY):

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Some Notable Strengths of Kant’s Approach:

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