Introduction to ethics: three approaches
A focus on moral reasoning

(Lecture 9)

(1) Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism 👥


Jeremy Bentham proclaimed that the supreme principle for judging the rightness or wrongness of all our actions is the Principle of Utility, also known as the Greatest Happiness Principle. On this criterion an action is right if it produces ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’.

For Bentham, then, moral judgment becomes a matter of measurement and
calculation, something akin to a cost-benefit analysis. In this so-called ‘felicific calculus’ (or calculus of happiness), “everybody [is] to count for one, nobody for more than one.” - Bentham’s main interest was in legislation.

Question: Who (or what) to include among the affected parties?


Bentham himself was inclined to include ‘sentient’ animals. Their interests should be taken into account, Bentham argued, because they are capable of suffering. He dismissed the usual arguments to deny moral status to animals (that they are beings without reason, that they cannot talk, etcetera) as irrelevant

Question: Is there really a common scale for pleasure and pain?


A major question is also whether the various feelings of pleasure and pain can really be compared to each other and be expressed in a common scale to enable addition and subtraction and arrive at an aggregate figure.

Objection: The utilitarian system lacks a principle of fair distribution


An important criticism is that Bentham’s system only proposes a criterion of aggregate happiness (or average happiness in the amended version), but fails to specify a distributive principle.

Objection: Utilitarianism justifies sacrificing the interests of the few for the sake of the many


Utilitarianism is often criticized for its tendency to allow, or even enjoin, the sacrifice of the vital interests of a single individual or of a minority for the sake of the social good, that is, the quantitatively larger interest of the majority.

Objection: Utilitarianism undermines the rules of common morality


Another customary criticism is that utilitarianism would plead not to follow the rules of common morality (such as that you should repay your debts or keep your promises) in those exceptional circumstances where deviating from these rules would produce more social utility or ‘general happiness’.

(2) Immanuel Kant and the Deontological Approach 👤


Like Bentham, Kant was a child of the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. He once wrote an award-winning prize essay answering the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’. His answer: “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.”12 Thus, for Kant, Enlightenment is the emancipation from immaturity (‘Unmündigkeit’ in German) towards autonomy or self-determination.

It is by virtue of their having the capacity of practical reason, according to Kant, that
human beings have moral dignity and possess intrinsic value.


As animals are creatures without reason, Kant holds, they are excluded from the class of beings deserving moral consideration

The universality of reason


Reason is an innate capacity more or less equally possessed by all human beings (at least all those who are not affected by severe forms of mental illness). It enables individuals to solve problems in a way that is acceptable to everyone.


Kant asks himself how we can decide which of the various moral rules that are presented to us as worthy to be followed should be unconditionally obeyed. He finds the test he is looking for in the operation of reason itself. His test uses the (presumed) universality of reason to generate moral commands that are (supposed to be) valid and applicable to all human beings. This is his famous ‘Categorical Imperative’ (the Moral Law) or the supreme moral principle.


Supreme moral law or ‘Categorical Imperative’, 2 formulations:


1) “I ought never to act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law.”
2) “Act so as to treat humanity, in your own person as well as in that of anyone else, always as an end, never merely as a means

The good will
A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, nor by its aptness for attaining some proposed end, but simply by virtue of its volition.”17 Kant is thus definitely not a consequentialist.


Acting out of duty, not out of prudence
Acting on the maxim never to give false promises as a prudent strategy does not testify to the good will of the agent; acting in this way out of duty does.


Acting out of duty, not from mere inclination
without any inclination for it, but simply from duty.”22 In Kant’s view, it is such acts that show genuine moral worth and testify to the good will of the originator, not the acts that spring easily and almost naturally from a good-natured temperament.23


What makes a rule morally acceptable: the test of universalizability
To perform the test, Kant says, "is to ask myself"


Strict negative duties and ‘wide’ positive duties The most straightforward applications of the universalizability test pertain to deception and lying. For Kant, therefore, the imperative never to tell lies is an absolute, unconditional moral rule

The principle of respect for autonomy


The principle of beneficence (‘beneficence’ means ‘doing good’, whereas ‘benevolence’ means ‘wishing well’)

(3) Aristotle, MacIntyre and Virtue Ethics


Although Aristotle considers eudaimonia (eudaimonia: happiness, felicity, prosperity) as the natural telos (aim) of human life, he does not promote it to the supreme criterion for guiding our actions.


for Aristotle, the relationship between the practising of
the virtues and a happy life is not simply an external relationship between means and ends; the virtues are rather seen as the central part of the good and happy life of man.

Against rules and cost-benefit calculations


Following Aristotle, virtue theorists like Alasdair MacIntyre argue that an authentic moral life cannot be based on the seemingly exact calculation of costs and benefits (against utilitarianism), nor on the proper application of principles and rules to dilemmatic situations (against deontology). Moral life is not a matter of calculation or rule-following, they insist, but of the exercise of the virtues. Moreover, being virtuous is much more than just having the motive to act for the sake of duty (Kant’s ‘good will’ does not suffice!).

Virtues and practices; internal goods and external goods


A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.


MacIntyre also holds that there are a few virtues that are vital for achieving the ‘internal goods’ of almost any practice. He mentions in particular courage, honesty and justice. In Antiquity, courage, justice, prudence and temperance (self-control) were considered to be the cardinal virtues. The Christian Middle Ages later added the three religious virtues to this list: faith, hope and love (charity).

Virtues must be cultivated


Virtues are no natural endowments, but must be acquired and developed in concrete practices by emulating the ‘excellent’ behaviour of the most virtuous ‘practitioners’. In short, the virtues must be cultivated.


Thus the acquisition of virtues quite literally follows the pattern of a ‘virtuous’ circle! The exercise of virtues also demands discernment and judgement in doing “the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way”

Objection: Should everybody aim at ‘excellence’?


Objection: What exactly should we do in morally difficult situations?

Animals and philosophy

Aristotle: Virtue ethics focuses on human.


Hierarchy in nature; Animals Exist for the Sake of Humans

Kant: Inherent Value Depends on Reason. Only Indirect Duties to Animals


Descartes: Dualism of Body and Mind; Animals are Machines without a Mind

Bentham: The Question is not:


Can they Reason, nor, Can they Talk, but, Can they Suffer?