Aristotle's View Of Morality By Immanuel Kant

In this essay I will argue that Aristotle’s view of morality is superior to that of Immanuel Kant because Aristotle takes into account an individual’s entire life when determining if they are an ethical person, whereas Kant looks only at the individual actions. He determines morality by looking at what kind of person we should be, while Kant answers these questions by looking at what actions we should perform. Secondly, Kant argues that happiness shouldn’t be involved in the ethical decision making process, while Aristotle believes that not only are happiness and ethical decisions linked, but in order to achieve happiness, it is required to make virtuous decisions. A third reason why I prefer Aristotle’s moral reasoning is that Kant says that …show more content…
He also argues that a completely ethical person will not be conflicted about his ethical choice, opposite of Kant, who thinks that a person can make an ethical choice while desiring the wrong alternative. In fact, he prefers that, because it shows that the person is doing his duty, not the action just because it makes him happy. Kant might defend himself by saying that it would be too easy for a person to succumb to selfish desires if he is gaining happiness from his virtuous acts, and any action is not moral if there are any external motivators, but I will show how this defense fails near the end of the paper. Kant and Aristotle have very different opinions on what makes a person virtuous and what defines a virtuous act. My thoughts on morality line up more with Aristotle’s. I believe that a person cannot be judged based on a single act, because everyone has made decisions they wish they could change and no one is perfect, that is just how humans are. A better way to assess morality is to look at the habits a person forms and the decisions a person makes throughout their life. For Kant, a person would be virtuous if they saved someone’s life, for example, even though it made them late for …show more content…
I don’t think that this should have anything to do with the judgment of an action’s morality. An action, no matter how good, may be considered amoral or even immoral if someone performs it due to a bad motivation, such as money or power, but happiness is not a bad motivation. In fact, Aristotle says that it is better if someone associates happiness with ethical acts, and that enjoying virtuous things is a sign of a virtuous person. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that, “Pleasure in doing virtuous acts is a sign that the virtuous disposition has been acquired: a variety of considerations show the essential connection of moral virtue with pleasure and pain.” It makes sense that someone who enjoys doing virtuous things could considered a virtuous person. It seems to me that Kant wants someone who hates virtuous acts but still performs them to be the virtuous person, but if someone enjoys the act, they are not virtuous at all. That is not the type of person I would want to give that credit to. If both people perform the same activity, but one person has a good attitude and will perform that activity again, and the other hated it and will avoid that situation in the future, I would say that the first person was the virtuous one. But Aristotle goes further than this by saying that happiness is more than just a factor in