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Kantian Ethics - Coggle Diagram
Kantian Ethics
AO1
Base morality on reason, allowing for potential agreement between faiths, creating a morally harmonious society
As science shows, laws through reason are universal so ethics can be too, these are known as categorical
An imperative is a moral statement due to the word 'should', a categorical imperative is something we should do in all cases, whilst a hypothetical imperative states what we should do in order to acheive certain goals
Universal laws apply in all cases and therefore must be categorical, whereas hypothetical imperatives are conditional on our personal feelings, and are therefore not genuine morally
only CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVEs are valid, you should do X, not for Y, just because you should
3 formulations
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Universalisable - everyone should be able to do it (if everybody stole, there would be nothing left to steal)
A good will is one which has the right moral motivation. We must do our duty out of a sense of duty - not because of our own personal feelings or desires
3 Postulates
Ethics cannot make sense without free will, because there would then be no such thing as moral responsibility. It is what separates us from animals and explains why humans can be morally bad, but animals cannot
There is an objective ethics we must follow, yet for it to make sense it must fall under 3 categories: Free will, afterlife's or God
Clashing duties
A soldier could either go to war to defend their country, or stay home & look after their sick parent. Both actions are universalizable and neither treats persons as mere means, therefore both actions are the person's duty
Furthermore, we must be capable of doing an action for it to be our duty. If maxims clash, and one cannot be followed, then it cannot be our duty. SO if these duties were obtained via CI, then it cannot actually tell us our duty
Some duties are perfect, such as not lying whereas cases of the soldier are imperfect duties, and can be completed in many ways (staying home & making bombs)
but what if the soldier cannot come home & the country doesn't need bombs? then the duties re-clash and therefore we cannot define our duty
Ignorance of emotion
Michael Stocker asks us to imagine a friend visiting you while you are in hospital saying they only came because it was their duty.
A virtuous person should not think of moral laws, they should simply do good out of habit. If we act out of duty, then it is not possible to act out of virtuous habits such as friendliness & love, which we use to ethically relate to others
Emotions are transient and fickle, being too unreliable for ethical motivation, when we act on emotion, our action depends on the way we feel. If we help others because we feel like it then we are ignoring the duty it comes with
Aristotle argues that we CAN develop good emotional habits, making them reliable in moral sitations
Consequentialism
Violates our moral intuitions due to the negative consequences of telling the truth in situations. Benjamin Constant created the murderer at the door scenario. If a murderer asked us where their victim was, and we knew, Constant argued we should lie. Telling the truth seems situational, not an absolute duty.
Morality cannot be reduced to a universal duty,
If we lied about where the victim was, yet the victim had actually moved, then we would be responsible for their death. We cannot control consequences, so we cannot be responisble for them