Kantian ethics

• Duty and good will 


  Good will is held by someone who had good intentions when performing their duty

  once we have used reasons to work out our duty we should act out of a sense of duty

  ‘duty for dutys sake’

  so a shop keeper who lowers the price to attract more customers VS one who does it to help customers
• hypothetical imp 


  A moral action that’s rational will adopt fr reasons other than duty (you should do X if you want Y)
• categorical imp


  something we have a duty to always do
• the first formulation of the cat imp


  ‘act only according to that maxim by which you could will it a universal law‘.

  we should only act in ways that are logical for all people to act

  eg. lying if everyone were to le then there would be no honesty anymore and lying would no longer exist and it relies on honesty

  some maxims can be universalised but shouldn’t as they contradict our rational will to achieve ends

  eg.always refuse help from others
• the second formulation 


  ‘always treat people as an. end, never nearly as a means‘

  to treat someone as means to an end is irrational as it denies their own will to achieve ends

  you can treate them as means as long as you also treat them as ends

  eg. a waiter serving=mean but treat them with respect = end
• the third formulation 


  the kingdom of ends- where we would be if everyone was kantian. a world of rational beings where everyone is treated as an end
• the three postulates 


  something you have to assume to be true in order to have a basis for reasoning about something

  1. god
  2. immortality
  3. free will- without free will we are not responsible so ethics is pointless

  sometimes bad people are rewarded and this is unjust

  for ethics to work there must be justice so he believed there was an afterlife to allow only good people to be rewarded w happiness

  summum bonum- highest good
• strength- ethical clarity

  Kant rules ad method is available to all rational beings and engages the autonomy of the individuals
• weakness - clashing duties


  if two duties clash and one cannot be done then it is not our duty - we must be able to achieve our duty

  however if these duties were obtained through kants categorical formulation then kantian ethics cannot tell us our duty
• Kant vs consequentialism 


  Strength:

  murderer at the door asking where victim is, we should lie

  but Kant says we cannot control consequences so we cant be responsible for them

  if the victim moved to where we lied about then we would be responsible for their death

  weakness:

  Kant goes against most people’s moral intuition

  we can control consequences to an extent so we are responsible for them to that extent
• the role of emotion


  s: Kant says emotions are unreliable and cannot control moral motivation

  if we help someone bc we feel like it (emotion) then we are not going it because it is good

  w: emotion has some value as motivation for moral action

  eg. asking a freind to visit you in hospital and they did it out of duty is unnatural
• Philipa foot 


  believes morality is hypothetical and denies that it is irrational to disobey the cat imp

  eg. etiquette, you should not eat with your mouth open is categorical but it would not be irrational to break this