• Kant believed there were absolute moral rules that could be worked out rationally
• Kant's theory is deontological, he is interested in right actions rather than right outcomes
• The rules Kant believed we should follow are categorical imperatives, they are things that we could make into universal laws, they allow us to treat people as ends and would be permissible in a perfect kingdom of ends

The three formulations

• Kant suggested that there are three ways that we can whether our actions are categorical imperatives:
• Universal law - Kant suggested that the action that we propose should be able to made a universal law or 'universalised' - we have to consider whether this is something that all people could logically do, if not, we shouldn't put ourselves above the law by being an exception
• People as ends - Kant believed that human beings are rational and autonomous - this means that we have a duty to treat each other as ends in themselves, and not as means
• Kingdom of ends - Kant asked us to imagine that we are part of the law-making council in a hypothetical perfect kingdom of ends - if we were to live in this place where everyone always treated others as ends, would our proposed action be something that could be permitted?

Kantian ethics does not provide a helpful method of moral decision making

• Kant's absolutist ethical system is inflexible to the situation - his argument that it is morally wrong to lie to a murderer seeking their next victim seems irrational
• Kant's ethics ignore the outcome of a situation, the outcome of our actions is often foreseeable and predictable - to choose to do something that obeys a moral rule but will almost certainly lead to increased misery or suffering seems like the wrong decision
• Kant gives us no way of deciding what to do when duties clash - in the murderer example, we can universalise both telling the truth and saving a life, it would appear that both of these are categorical imperatives
• Kant's ethics appear abstract and impractical when applied to real life - his theoretical kingdom of ends appears to ignore reality and may not be useful in practice
• The principle of universal law does not necessarily show us our moral duties - non-moral maxims can logically be universalised, but this doesn't make them real moral duties - similarly, just because something cannot be universalised, it doesn't mean it is immoral

Kantian ethics provides a helpful method of moral decision making

• Duty as an idea is better than depending on our inclinations, which are led by our emotions which change - we are also less prone to personal bias if duty is our key principle
• Kant's ethics are rational - Kant gives humans the responsibility for making decisions and he believes that humanity's ability to reason and work things out will enable us to reach the right answers
• Kant is right that consequences can't be predicted - systems such as situation ethics and utilitarianism require us to make predictions about the future result of our actions - we cannot be held responsible for things that are not within our control
• Kant's principle of universal law is a useful rule - it has similarities with the principle that is found in all the main religious faiths of not doing things to others that you would not wish to be done to you
• Kant's ethics values people - in addition to respecting their rationality, his principle of treating people as ends is helpful in practical ethics and ensures that every human being is significant (something utilitarianism fails to do)
• Modern views of justice and rights owe much to Kantian ethics, particularly the focus on people
• Kant's ethics can be seen as secular - the principles can be applied by people of all faiths and atheists

Right and wrong does depend on duty

• Duty is rational and as such is not subject to our changing emotions or circumstances
• The concept of duty rightly involves giving to each person and the things that we owe in terms of how we treat them - therefore it allows us to respect people

Right and wrong does not depend on duty

• The concept of duties is useful in public sector employment but does not seem to apply to every area of life
• There is a danger of conflating duty with obedience to authority
• There are often issues with conflicting duties, where we cannot fulfil both of the good actions that seem to be required

Kant is wrong to rely on human reason

• There are limits to human reason - our minds experience the world through categories that we impose - issues such as the existence of God are beyond our ability to provide proof
• There are valid objections to the power of reason - Barth would argue that human reason is limited and we require God's revelation in order to gain truth
• Freud challenged the reliance on reason and argued that our moral thinking is the product of subconscious drives produced by our upbringing - this would make morality more instinctive than reasoned
• Situation ethics would reject the claim that ethics should be based on duty and reason - agape is a better motivation for Fletcher
  

Kant is right to rely on human reason

• Morality does come within the sphere of reason - our moral duties are a priori, we are able to work them out using our reason
• Kant believed in autonomy - treating people as ends means that one of the things we owe to each other is to respect autonomy, allowing people to reason for themselves rather than imposing our ethical ideas
• Kant assumes that there is one fixed human nature and therefore one way of reasoning - therefore when reasoning we should come to the same conclusions about what the categorical imperatives are