Kant & Mill on the Purpose of Life
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1. To Immanuel Kant, moral behavior is what a person ought to do, rather than what he wants to do. The basis of Kant's ethics is the belief that reason exists and is the tool whereby one determines what is right and wrong, and that the will is what leads one to follow the moral path in choosing the right action. Kant says that the individual considering an action should act as if every other person in the world were going to act in the same way. The basis of his moral theory is the categorical imperative. This imperative "immediately commands a certain conduct without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it." In other words, the results of the action do not determine its morality. Kant goes on: "There is only one categorical imperative and it is this: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Kant 156). Within this imperative, there are two sorts of duties, the perfect and the imperfect. Kant actually describes these duties in negative terms. That is, he gives examples of situations in which one's actions would conflict with the perfect or imperfect duty. One duty involves a situation in which it is impossible to even consider that the maxim drawn from an action could be seen as a universal law. Kant uses the example of a man contemplating suicide to illustrate this position. The man considering suicide sees such an action as one of "self-love" in which "I make as my principle to
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ight action even though that action is not, in at least one sense, in his self-interest.
In another sense, of course, it is in the individual's self-interest for him to apply the Heimlich maneuver because he is saying, in effect, that everyone should apply the maneuver to a choking person even though he or she does not like that other person. However, he is not acting because it will benefit him, but only because his reason tells him that it is his duty to do so and that his action is in accordance with the categorical imperative.
Therefore, Kant's theory does give an adequate evaluation of the choice to administer the maneuver. The actor likely will not go through this process of rational analysis in the midst of such a crisis. The actor choosing to do the right thing might simply understand that it is the right thing because he has been raised to help another in need, or because he has previously worked out the intricacies of the categorical imperative and applied it in earlier situations.
2. John Stuart Mill does break with consequentialism and moves closer to the virtue ethics of Aristotle and the deontology of Kant in response to the charges that utilitarianism is a doctrine for swine and an immoral doctrine that justif
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2105
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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