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“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”- Immanuel Kant





Both Aristotle and Kant argue that the purpose of human life is to be virtuous. However, the two philosophers do not agree on the goal of ethics. Immanuel Kant summarized a moral theory in his Groundings for the Metaphysics of Morals with the main goal of attaining freedom. Aristotle held to his theory that a person is simply the summation of their actions which ultimately are aimed toward reaching happiness. While it is important to achieve a sense of happiness, Kant reaches further, asserting that ethical question is based on ones motive. It is Kant’s belief of motive and “good will” that lead to the importance of human life.

Aristotle’s theory, as displayed in the works of Nicomachean Ethics, that the purpose to human life was happiness. In the Ethics, Aristotle called happiness "the chief good" (Aristotle 11) and claimed that it was "the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest thing," (Aristotle 14) therefore concluding that "happiness is something final and self-sufficing and is the end of all that man does." (Aristotle 10). Kant’s stance differs from Aristotle in his writings of Groundings for the Metaphysics of Morals, and questions why do humans have the ability to reason if the ultimate goal is to simply be happy? Kant believed that, "if the proper end of nature were…its happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the creature to carry out this purpose" (Kant 9). Kant implies that personal happiness is not the goal to which morality is aimed at. Aristotle considered that a person’s actions are executed for a good purpose and to benefit others. In other words, “Moral virtue is acquired by the repetition of the corresponding acts,” and, “These acts must be such as reason prescribes; they cannot be defined exactly,...