According to Kant, right actions are not done by following inclinations, impulses or obeying the principle of greatest happiness but are done simply and purely from the sense of duty. Kessler says that some ethical truths and norms are appropriate to everyone in the society, and therefore, people should always act morally irrespective of the outcome for their morals. In deontology ethics, actions are done for the sake of duty. The intrinsic moral feature determines the rightness or wrongness of the act taken by individuals. The duty should always be done by taking the right.
This is an idea which is absolute and according to Kant, the way we decide the morality of an action. Kantian ethics explains that for something to be good, the only true motivation behind it would be Good Will, with desire or instinct considered and the only purpose being to fulfil your duty and act morally. These moral principles are thought to be categorical imperatives which everyone should abide by even if they are of no benefit to them, There are three principles of the categorical imperative, the first being the universal law. It was believed that you should only act on a maxim, which is a personal law or rule. If you would not want the rule to be universalised, you should not be completing the action.
Therefore, actions are inherently moral or immoral, regardless of the beliefs and goals of the individual, society or culture that engages in the action. The theory holds that morals are inherent in the law of the universe, the nature of humanity, the will of god, or some other fundamental source. Thus, the theory recognizes objective facts about morality: moral claims are either true or false for everyone. One such relative theorist, Hobbes, argues for morality as a solution for practical problems. Morality, in his system, is a vehicle to move from state of nature into law of nature, and is a move mandated by self-interest.
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).
David Hume and Immanuel Kant on Morality When discussing the morality of ethics there are many different schools of thought by which we can attempt to justify why we think or do things the way we do; why we value the things we value; and what makes our actions right or wrong. In this essay I will address the flaws in the assumptions of Immanuel Kant’s theories on morality by reason, using David Hume’s beliefs on morality by feelings and material from the Subjectivist school of thought. The Kantian view on morality places extreme emphasis on reason rather than what we desire as humans. In other words, people act in accordance to what is their duty, not by how they feel or what they personally believe to be right. This is in direct violation with David Hume’s stance on morality.
The weakness of Virtue Ethics outweighs its strengths – Discuss. Virtue ethics is the ethics of us as persons and argues that morality is not about duties. There are a number of arguments for and against virtue ethics, and most for, argue for the formation and growth of us via phronesis or practical wisdom, which allows us to make the right decisions by using our conscience. Virtue ethics is mainly supported by Aristotle. It is based on different virtues that a person should have, so that they can then reach Euadamonia.
In other way we can state that it is always moral to promote self-interest and it is not moral not to promote it. So it is a moral duty of every person to pursue his or her own interest. According to Ethical Egoism, there is only one ultimate principle of conduct, the principle of self-interest, and this principle sums up all of one’s natural duties and obligations. The only way, through which you can help others, according to Ethical Egoism, if it is in someone’s best interest to help others. Ethical Egoism talks only about the self-interest which is better for the person over long run.
The difference is that utilitarianism states that no matter what a person should never stray from the moral that will bring the greatest good. Kant justifies that under certain circumstances one could stray from the moral as long as the truths are logically consistent and universalizable. Utilitarianism is broken down into two categories; act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. The act utilitarian believes that one cannot establish rules in advance to cover all situations, actions and people because they are all different. The rule utilitarian believes that there are enough human motives and situations to justify setting up rules that apply to all humans and situations.
An analysis of Kant’s ethics of duty and freedom as a response to all previous ethical theories proves the characteristics of the Kantian ethics and the most significant contrast to utilitarianism, according to Kant, is the ethics of duty in which normative judgments are made on the basis of the character of the action rather than its consequences. According to the Kantian ethics, people have the duty to act in certain ways even if it does not produce the best results. “The ethics of duty is rooted in Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative ‘Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,’ which in turn is rooted in the belief that humans are rational beings capable of self-determination and self-governance. Every responsible person is therefore entitled to dignity and respect.” (Budd and Scoville, 2005, p 9). Thus, the views of Kant, who is the most important supporter in history of deontological ethics or the study of duty, insist that the single feature that gives an action moral value is the motive that is behind the action.
Kantians believe in what Immanuel Kant, the founder of this theory, called “pure practical reason”, meaning that true Kantian theory begs us to ask the simple question of “what is the right thing to do?” To determine what the “right thing to do” is a Kantian would use one of the main focuses of Kantian ethics, the principle of universalizability. This principle teaches that an action, such as in this case – stealing, is morally acceptable if its maxim is universalizable. A maxim is what an individual states they are going to do and why they are going to do it. Through the principle of universalizability a maxim, which is normally viewed as an individual’s purpose, is only universalizable if an individual’s maxim can be achieved in a