The moral argument poses the question: "Where does our conscience, our sense of morality come from, if not from God?" It also asserts that if we accept the existence of objective moral laws we must accept the existence of who ever gives the laws. This is the observable fact that human beings sometimes appear to act from a sense of moral duty in which there is no self-interest or thought for the consequences of that act. (In an attempt to achieve Sumon Bonum)- The greatest of all rewards. Kant drew an important distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.
Duty can be explained by Kant as “act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”, meaning that you should only act in a way that you would want the rest of society to act. Trough out a person’s lifetime they will perform a countless amount of actions, but of those actions, the majority are done from inclination, and not from duty. According to Kant that would mean that no one has great moral worth. I disagree with Kant, because I believe that acts that are done from inclination are more morally worthy as those that are
Plato discussed the question of God being good. To say that God is good, a means of comparing God to something external call good must exist. Plato used this argument in Euthyphro1. A morally perfect being always chooses the good action over the evil one. In order to be morally perfect both good and evil must exist outside of God so that he can choose it.
Despite being a theory which seemingly encourages acceptance and moral rationality, subjectivism is deemed as flawed on two predominant levels. Firstly, it assumes an infallibility for the speaker that is not justified. And secondly, subjectivism seemingly renders moral disagreement and therefore advancement impossible. Whilst these two objections may seem solid on a logical level, they pose little threat to subjectivism as an undeniable fact of reality. The first argument, that subjectivism creates infallible moral agents, reads as follows.
Romales Harty Ethics/Morals Immanuel Kant Intentions vs. Consequence In Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals Kant parleys about goodwill, duty, and the categorical imperative. When Kant states “the true vocations of reason must be to produce a will that is good, not perhaps as a means to other purposes, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary. This will need not, because of this, be the sole and complete good, but it must still be the highest good and the condition of every other, even of all demands for happiness”, implies that goodwill is what makes you good as a person. You have to want to mean good and use reason to figure out what to do with goodwill (desire).
There cannot be a wrong unless there is something that is right to compare it to. In the Law of Human Nature, C.S Lewis sets forth the foundational ideas regarding right and wrong. The most basic yet most important concept is that without the knowledge of what is right; humans cannot make the claim that something is wrong. By pointing out that one’s idea is not correct one is inadvertently admitting that he believes in a standard of right and wrong. C.S Lewis points out that all humans have a tendency to quarrel.
Free will is a big responsibility, and the cardinal's argument justifies the fact on why man should not be privileged with this. His totalitarian view is simply, as long as he can provide security and stability, a human doesn't require free will. All they are expected to do is follow the guidelines provided by the authority figure. In this case, the cardinal. Whereas another believer Kant, strongly believes that human beings are ought to be free, and one must do anything to make his own decisions.
One of the most important ideals of Emmanuel Kant is to live by the categorical imperative, which is to act only according to that maxim at which you at the same time can will to be a universal law. He is basically saying we can only do things that we can want others to do as well. If there is something that we would not want anyone else to do then it would be ethically wrong. This is hard thing to live by. Even harder than the golden rule, “treat others how you would want to be treated”.
Also, Kant sustain that reason is the most important concept to identify what is ethical in a moral universal law, and that nothing have to be done because of self interest, utility, inclination, feeling or pity. Based on the previous information, a Kantian perspective does not allow cheating in a final exam because it is considered an immoral act. Cheating could not be a motive nor could it be accommodated as a universal law, because it will indicate that cheating has moral value, resulting in an irrelevant action of making a test to educate our society. From another point of view, an ethical egoist has a completely different perspective of cheating on an exam compared to a Kantian perspective. Ethical egoism has its fundamental on the justified actions that benefit only the interest of a person, or self interest.
Immorality therefore is the violation of such law. Kant goes on to argue that the morality of any action can be seen, not by the desired consequences, but by the motive behind the action. Basically, Kant believes that we should act because of the motive not because we see the end results of the action. Consequences of an act are, for the most part, irrelevant to morality; we can control the motives but not control the results. Motives then can be measured by whether or not they can be turned into a universal maxim.