Immanuel Kant A Groundwork Of The Metaphysics Of Morals?

art IIII: Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant published A Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) five years after Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislations, launching a scathing critique of utilitarianism. Kant proposed that a moral action does not suggest treating individuals as a means to an end. What Kant means by this is that we treat individuals for the sake of something else (means), such as Dudley and Stephens treating Parker as a means to maximise happiness. Instead, a moral action is one that treats individuals as ends in themselves, one that does not account for external influences such as happiness. Individuals are worthy of dignity and respect not because we own our bodies and minds but because we are rational beings, capable of reason and conscious thought. Kant claimed that we are likewise autonomous beings, equipped with the freedom to act and make moral decisions. He concluded that these abilities enforce us to oblige to moral laws and codes.

Kant highlighted that maximising overall happiness and pleasure does not justify the morality of an action; making a person happy does not make them virtuous. Although …show more content…
Kant claimed, “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end.” Our actions are defined as an end in themselves; we do something for its own sake, rather than for the sake of maximising happiness, to name an example. For Dudley and Stephens to use Parker as a means to maximise their own happiness is to deny him his own faculty for free will and action, consequently negating his ability to be rational and