Immanuel Kant And John Stuart Mill

The people saved produced more happiness than the pain of one death. On the other hand, had someone killed Hitler and a more deviant person taken Hitler’s position, and retaliated by capturing and killing even more innocent people the act of killing Hitler would have been morally wrong. At no point is the act of killing wrong just the consequence that it produces. Mills believes the highest good will follow the principle of utility. The principle of utility argues that actions that produce the most happiness are the morally correct thing to do. Therefore the basis of the consequences determines what we are morally obligated to do.

According to Kant, the moral worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but in the intention from which the act is done. The motive that confers moral worth on an action is the motive of duty. Motive of duty means doing the right thing for the right reason. Only actions done out of the motive of duty have moral worth.

The idea of an action to be intrinsically good is not as straight forward as proposed by Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill in The Groundswork and Utilitarianism respectively. Kant, in The Groundswork, and Mill, in Utilitarianism, come to different conclusions about what is intrinsically good, yet neither of them come to a valid explanation for the following reasons; Kant produces a narrow view focused entirely on having a good will, acting only based off of duties, and ignoring the outcomes of your actions, while Mill calculates intrinsic value based off of the greatest happiness principle which doesn’t take into account a good will. The correct and most reasonable explanation of what is intrinsically good is a combination of what both

In Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant discusses morality to revolve around imperatives that remain true and applicable to all situations. Categorical imperatives are rules that must be followed regardless of one’s personal desires which may exemplify greed, power, money. Kant recognizes that these “abilities and traits can become extremely evil and destructive if the will behind these gifts of nature and the character they produce is not good” (13). Kant’s moral principles are based on a priori concepts that are based on reasoning and investigations. A priori reasoning encourages people to act out of duty with the reasoning that people do actions that reflect those duties.

Kant firmly believed that the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether or not our duty is fulfilled. Kant believed that the Categorical Imperative was “the supreme principal of morality, and determined what our moral duties are” (Kantian Ethics). The Categorical Imperative is expressed as, “acting only on a maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (“Internet”). A maxim is defined as a rule or principle on which you act. The command basically stated that you are not allowed to do anything that you wouldn’t allow everyone else to do. In other words, one is not able to make an exception of oneself. For example, if one expects others not to steal from one, one is not allowed to steal from anyone else. More precisely, it stated that every maxim one acts on must be one that one is willing to argue that everyone would act on if one was in a similar situation. For instance, if one wants to lie to get something one wants, one would have to be willing to argue that everyone lies to get what he or she wants. This makes the maxim universal.

Mary Midgley critically analyzes philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and David Hume, and argues that they have greatly influenced our way of thinking. She quotes G.R. Grice, in which he states that not all classes have natural rights, and questions just what rights and duties, by an extension, are. By delving into the thoughts of John Stuart Mill and Kant, she formulates her own arguments and contends that duties should be applied to everything and everyone around us. She stresses that that a person is responsible to everything, from another human being to an inanimate object. She then separates these duties into five different sectors: the human, animal, inanimate, comprehensive, and miscellaneous (such as oneself and God). Using this chart, she demonstrates that it is quite easy for one to exclude minorities when you only look at a portion of the scale and refuse to examine the entire image. Furthermore, she makes a very clear distinction that we should not have duties towards these inanimate sectors because we must personify them, but rather because these objects contain value to those who are animate. Therefore, she concludes that we all have to duties to these sectors, not just in concerns of them.

Big decisions are life changing and everyone makes them. The decision of what to do after high school. Or whether a person should marry their current companion. These decisions are the crossroads of a person’s life. Jim’s decision is a little different. He face a moral dilemma which affects the indigenous people of South America. According to moral relativism, every person has a different moral perspective of different issues. Therefore, if every person has a different belief of morality, there is no right answer to dilemmas only different opinions. Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are philosophers with two different views on a person’s moral conscious. Kant believes morality is a duty that people should hold above their own happiness.

It’s time for the big Names for our western philosophy to show themselves. Both Make a philosophy viewing the actions we as humans make daily and trying to decipher if they are good or bad. Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill will be analyzed over their own moral philosophy’s. next I will use both of their theory’s, and try to find how they would approach the moral question if a person comes into a bank and attempts to rob the bank but a cop shoots the robber is that cop doing the right thing?? Finally, I will put my view into the mix on who is “in the right” and why I feel that they are right on the moral question.

In Kantian ethics, he believes that the supreme principle of morality is founded on the idea of the categorical imperative. In order to act with a good will, which is the highest good one can achieve, one must act in a way where the good is not a means to an end, but the good is an end in itself. In order for one to test whether or not the action is of good will, the maxim, or the personal rule according to which a person was acting, must be applied. Furthermore, these maxims are then tested by the categorical imperative; if the action can pass this categorical imperative, the rule can be made into universal law. By universalizing the law, Kant believes that this ascertains the rule as applicable to everyone at all times and in turn, is a perfect duty that

[2] Therefore, he argues a categorical imperative is necessary to both develop and lead us to will to do moral rules. A categorical imperative is an unconditional requirement for a person to perform a given action simply because it is their moral duty and regardless of the action's consequences. [1] Kant developed three ways of expressing the categorical imperative. He claimed that all of these were equivalent in that they lead to the same moral law. One way to view this is that acting on one of them would them would lead a person to follow the others as well. [2] Each of them allows us a way to determine absolute moral laws from a different

John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant are widely renowned in the philosophical world for their ethical theories. Both philosophers have unique perspectives when it comes to the world of ethics. Mill’s Utilitarianism and Kant’s ethical theory interpret the concept of morality differently. Even though both theories have their difference, they also bring a new perspective to morality that I never thought about before.

In this specific Emmanuel Kant piece of philosophy, he is in search of explaining what are the motivations for acting upon something and also what is their maxim, you have the duty to do right and when you do wrong you are violating this duty as a human being (Kant). Kant describes a term called imperative as “any proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary (Kant)”. A categorical imperative would be described as being anytime where an action has an ending, which must be followed exactly in any circumstance. Kant specifically defines categorical imperative as “ only act so that the maxim of your action could be willed to be universal law (Kant)”. A maxim that is described can be thought of being a motivational term

That people had a great need to promote ethical behavior, which of course is still true today. With this Kant came up with the idea called the “Categorical Imperative”, which could also be known as “Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals.” This meant, “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” When I first read that I had to read it couple of times and then ask myself. What did this mean? Then realized that it meant “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” With this being said it was offering him a way of testing the morality of an action by imagining how it would be if it were practiced and you were the victim of it. For us it could be as simple as taking something from work. But if we all did it then we wouldn’t have supplies and would have to be guarded. A bit like if you can do it, I can do it too and expect you to be okay with it. The categorical imperative is designed our perspective, to get us to see our own behavior in less immediately personal terms and thereby recognize some of its limitations. Kant went on to argue that this idea could be stated in another way: Act so as to treat people always as ends in themselves, never as mere

1.The ship’s cook has asked us whether or not it is morally ok to kill and cook up some of the local life to sustain ourselves while we shelter on this planet. I would like to pull up the philosophers from our holographic archive that would argue that it is morally ok to do so. The three philosophers that will aid me in my decision are Jeremy Bentham, Kant, and John Stuart Mill.

Kant believed that there is an 'objective moral law ' this meant, he did not depend on a point of view. If there is a moral law there is a duty to obey this law. To act morally, it is necessary to have a good will for example to help someone just because it would be the right thing to do in the certain situation. Morality is made up of 'categorical imperatives ' meaning that you should do something simply because they are the correct things to do, as you are expected to fulfill things in life this is called a certain 'duty '.