Kantian ethics

Kant

‘Life without reason and morality has no value’

Principle of universalisation

‘your principle of action might safely become a law for the whole world’

• e.g. telling lies

  • poor man, unable to repay loan, debt collectors threatening action

  • shouldn’t borrow money from friend knowing can’t repay

  • success of lie depends on there not being universal law permitting it

    • ppl must believe other telling truth

  • if it were universal law that everyone makes false promises, concept of a “promise” would disappear

    • no one would ever believe a promise again

ends not means

‘treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means also’

‘intrinsic worth, that is, dignity’

• e.g. in business

  • entrepeneuer pays workers minimal amount and uses customers to maximise profit

  • morally incorrect, profit can still be acomplished in diff way

kingdom of ends

‘so, act as if you were through your maxim a law-making member of a kingdom of ends’

intinsic duty + responsibility

Schopenhaur

• impractical

• need compassion

• too idealistic

• K ignores human nature, not guided by cold logic

Hegel

forces humans into ‘internal conflict’ between reason and desire

Benjamin Constant

e.g. murderer at door with axe

Michael Stocker

e.g. friend visiting you at hospital saying only bc it’s their duty

Aristotle

• cultivating virtues

• develop good emotional and behavioural habits

• can rationally control emotions, can be relied onto to motivate us in moral situations

Singer

‘reasonable expectation’ of consequences

analytical statements

• predicate included within subject

• e.g. spinsters (subject) are female (predicate)

• a priori

• necessarily true

synthetic statements

• predicate not included in statement

• a posteriori

• not necessarily true

a priori synthetic

• moral knowledge

• need rational knowledge + empirical data

• experience world (synthetic) + apply rationality (a priori) to know at first sight if action morally right

• know moral law without reference to consequences

duty and man of goodwill

e.g. shopkeeper

hypothetical imperative

• command to act to achieve desired result

• amoral

• no imperative of morality

categorical imperative

• command to do good in itself regardless of consequences (wishes/ desires)

• moral obligation

• know “ought” bc have reason

• know (reason) + can (free) → I ought → duty → categorical iperative

3 postulates

1. freedom (autonomy)

• only moral law should follow = knowable by reason

• ppl free to make rational decisions

• shouldn’t be obedient to moral laws laid down by others (not heteronymous approahces)

1. Immorality + 2. God and the summum bonum

   1. reason → morality exists

   2. have duty (cat imp) to seek highest form of good (summum bonum)

      1. not possible in this life

   3. for goal to be meaningful, highest good exist

      1. so God must exist

   4. there must be afterlife, where summum bonum can be achieved and virtue rewarded, evil punished