GROUP 4: KANTIANISM AND UTILITARIANISM

Who is Immanuel Kant?

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher during the Enlightenment era of the late 18th century. His
best known work is the Critique of Pure Reason.

Synopsis
Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Konigsberg, Prussia, or what is now Kaliningrad, Russia.
While tutoring, he published science papers, including "General Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens" in 1755. He spent the next 15 years as a metaphysics lecturer. In 1781, he published the first
part of Critique of Pure Reason. He published more critiques in the years preceding his death on
February 12, 1804, in the city of his birth.

Early Life
Immanuel Kant was the fourth of nine children born to Johann Georg Cant, a harness maker, and Anna
Regina Cant. Later in his life, Immanuel changed the spelling of his name to Kantto to adhere to German
spelling practices. Both parents were devout followers of Pietism, an 18th-century branch of the
Lutheran Church. Seeing the potential in the young man, a local pastor arranged for the young Kant's
education. While at school, Kant gained a deep appreciation for the Latin classics.
In 1740, Kant enrolled at the University of Konigsberg as a theology student, but was soon attracted to
mathematics and physics. In 1746, his father died and he was forced to leave the university to help his
family. For a decade, he worked as a private tutor for the wealthy. During this time he published several
papers dealing with scientific questions exploring the middle ground between rationalism and
empiricism.

Full-Fledged Scholar and Philosopher

In 1755, Immanuel Kant returned to the University of Konigsberg to continue his education. That same
year he received his doctorate of philosophy. For the next 15 years, he worked as a lecturer and tutor
and wrote major works on philosophy. In 1770, he became a full professor at the University of
Konigsberg, teaching metaphysics and logic.
In 1781, Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason, an enormous work and one of the most
important on Western thought. He attempted to explain how reason and experiences interact with
thought and understanding. This revolutionary proposal explained how an individual’s mind organizes
experiences into understanding the way the world works.
Kant focused on ethics, the philosophical study of moral actions. He proposed a moral law called the
“categorical imperative,” stating that morality is derived from rationality and all moral judgments are
rationally supported. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong; there is no grey area. Human
beings are obligated to follow this imperative unconditionally if they are to claim to be moral.

Later Years
Though the Critique of Pure Reason received little attention at the time, Kant continued to refine his
theories in a series of essays that comprised the Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of
Judgement. Kant continued to write on philosophy until shortly before his death. In his last years, he
became embittered due to his loss of memory. He died in 1804 at age 80.
Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born
in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term Kantianism or Kantian is sometimes also used
to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.

Philosophy of Mind - is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its
relationship with the body.

Epistemology - is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much
debate in epistemology centers on four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge
and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification,[1][2] (2) various problems
of skepticism, (3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for
knowledge and justification.

Ethics - Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil,
right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry,
moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory.

1.VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS

Kant defines happiness as “the state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence
everything goes according to his wish and will.”

2. KANT AND THE GOOD WILL

What does Kant mean by a "good will"?
To act out of a "good will" for Kant means to act out of a sense of moral obligation or "duty". In other
words, the moral agent does a particular action not because of what it produces (its consequences) in
terms of human experience, but because he or she recognizes by reasoning that it is morally the right
thing to do and thus regards him or herself as having a moral duty or obligation to do that action. One
may of course as an added fact get some pleasure or other gain from doing the right thing, but to act
morally, one does not do it for the sake of its desirable consequences, but rather because one
understands that it is morally the right thing to do. In this respect Kant's view towards morality parallels
the Christian's view concerning obedience to God's commandments, according to which the Christian
obeys God's commandments simply because God commands them, not for the sake of rewards in
heaven after death or from fear of punishment in hell. In a similar way, for Kant the rational being does
what is morally right because he recognizes himself as having a moral duty to do so rather than for
anything he or she may get out of it.
Do all persons have the same moral duties?
All persons are equal as potentially rational beings. Therefore, if reason dictates that one person, in a
particular situation, has a moral duty to do a particular thing, then any person, in that same situation,
would equally well have a duty to do that same thing. In this sense Kant's reasoning parallels the way in
which stoicism led Roman lawyers to the conclusion that all citizens are equal before the law. Thus Kant
is a moral "absolutist" in the sense that all persons have the same moral duties, for all persons are equal
as rational beings.

3. HYPOTHETICAL AND CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES

A HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE [i.e., an imperative based on inclination or desire] represents "the
practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed (or at least which one
might possibly will)."
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE [i.e., an imperative based on reason alone] is one that represents "an action
as objectively necessary in itself apart from its relation to a further end".

4. PURE PRACTICAL REASON AND THE MORAL LAW

PRACTICAL REASON - In philosophy, practical reason is the use of reason to decide how to act. It
contrasts with theoretical reason, often called speculative reason, the use of reason to decide what to
follow. For example, agents use practical reason to decide whether to build a telescope, but theoretical
reason to decide which of two theories of light and optics is the best.
PURE REASON - So when Kant says ‘pure reason’, he is talking about reasoning without experience
(pure=without experience/sense data). His argument is that we ought to regulate our reasoning because
bad metaphysics (i.e. attempting to prove God) is rooted in an unregulated reason. So instead of setting
metaphysics on fire and becoming an empiricist like Hume, he wants us to regulate our reasoning to
make sure it doesn’t conclude things that cannot be concluded.
Pure Reason= Thinking about ideas (such as God, Infinity etc.) without any experience/sense
data/empirical data
MORAL LAW - Kant's Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks with Plato's Republic
and Aristotle's Ethics as one of the most important works of moral philosophy ever written. In Moral
Law, Kant argues that a human action is only morally good if it is done from a sense of duty, and that a
duty is a formal principle based not on self-interest or from a consideration of what results might follow.
From this he derived his famous and controversial maxim, the categorical imperative: "Act as if the
maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." H. J. Paton's translation
remains the standard in English for this work. It retains all of Kant's liveliness of mind, suppressed
intellectual excitement, moral earnestness, and pleasure in words. The commentary and detailed
analysis that Paton provides is an invaluable and necessary guide for the student and general reader.

5. UNIVERLIZABILITY TEST
The principle of universalizability is a form of a moral test that invites us to imagine a world in which any
proposed action is also adopted by everyone else. Most notably, it is the foundational principle for
deontological, or duty-based, ethics.
For example, if we are tempted to lie, then we have to think what the world would be like if everyone
lied, or in a similar vein, if we consider donating to charity, what would it be like if everyone made the
same choice.

UTILITARIANISM
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to
overall utility in maximizing happiness or pleasure as summed among all people. It is, then, the total
utility of individuals which is important here, the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

1. UTILITY AND THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE

the Greatest Happiness Principle says actions are moral if they promote utility but are immoral if they
promote the opposite. Utility, for this purpose, is defined as happiness without pain. So, if someone
commits an action that provides happiness without pain, then that action is moral. If the action does not
cause happiness without pain, then that action is immoral.

2. ACT AND RULE UTILITARIANISM

RULE - Action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or
wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance."
Rule=general happiness that would be maximized and is able to create maximized happiness if followed
as a general rule
ACT - Person's act is morally right if and only if it produces at least as much happiness as any other act
that the person could perform at that time. Act utilitarianism is linked to Jeremy Bentham, moral
decisions are decisions that are based upon consequences of each individual situation in relation to the
total amount of happiness that they produce.

The supposed difference between Rule Utilitarianism and Act Utilitarianism

For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when
followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge an act in terms of the consequences of that act alone.

Example: A rule utilitarian drives at night and sees a red intersection light. Thinking "it would have good
consequences if people would stick to the rule and not cross red lights, so everyone is safe while waiting
for a short while", she would apply that rule to herself and wait for it to turn green. Meanwhile, the act
utilitarian might think "well, I certainly hope that people, who aren't me, in general follow that rule and
stay put, but as there's no one around who might get influenced by my act, since there's no police
around to fine me, and since I would see an approaching car as it's dark, I might as well cross right now."

3. UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENCES

Rule Consequentialism bases moral rules on their consequences. This removes many of the problems of
act consequentialism. Rule consequentialism teaches:
Whether acts are good or bad depends on moral rules. Moral rules are chosen solely on the basis of
their consequences

Act Consequentialism looks at every single moral choice anew. It teaches:

A particular action is morally good only if it produces more overall good than any alternative action.

Negative Consequentialism is the inverse of ordinary consequentialism. Good actions are the ones that
produce the least harm.
A person should choose the act that does the least amount of harm to the greatest number of people.

4. DOES THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

This is the core of the distinction between two main ethical positions: Deontology and
Consequentialism.
Deontology - Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong. Deontology
is often associated with philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that ethical actions follow universal
moral laws, such as “Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat.”
Deontology is simple to apply. It just requires that people follow the rules and do their duty. This
approach tends to fit well with our natural intuition about what is or isn’t ethical.
Consequentialism, on the other hand, says that whether an action is "good" or "bad" depends on the
outcome. They propose some standard by which to measure the outcome (usually "utility"), and think
that the best course of action is the one that maximizes utility. For consequentialists, the
ends always justify the means.
Consequentialism - Consequentialism is based on two principles:
 Whether an act is right or wrong depends only on the results of that act
 The more good consequences an act produces, the better or more right that act
It gives us this guidance when faced with a moral dilemma:
 A person should choose the action that maximises good consequences
And it gives this general guidance on how to live:
 People should live so as to maximise good consequences
Different forms of consequentialism differ over what the good thing is that should be
maximised.