Utilitarianism Versus Kant's Moral Theory

Name: Ali Yazdani
Subject: Final Ethics paper

Among different moral theories, Utilitarianism is one of the most known moral theories. This moral theory was established by Bentham later John Stuart Mill developed this theory to a wider extent in order to answer the critiques of utilitarianism. Through this theology the question of right and wrong is determined based on the consequence of an action. Utilitarianism similarly as other moral theories is not without criticism and one of the critiques of this theory is Kant’s moral theory. According to Kant the nature of moral worthiness is completely different from utilitarianism. Both Mill’s utilitarianism and Kant’s moral theory are realist theories. However, based on Kant’s moral theory “the …show more content…
For instance in the case of a fat man which is stucked in the mouth of a cave with his fellow friends Kant’s moral theory would be against blowing up the fat man in the cave. On the other hand, utilitarianism theology would support the elimination of fat man because it will save more lives and it would have in general more utility for the society. However, what is not clear for utilitarian view is that the consequences are not clear. Who knows what would be the outcome of eliminating the fat man. Maybe the fat man could be more effective for society if he could survive. There can be a major number of ambiguous cases as consequences of the action, what makes utilitarianism to eliminate the fat man is the current circumstance of people in the cave. Moreover, Kant would criticize elimination of fat man by his doctrine of dignity. According to Kant, there are certain things which we can’t put value on upon such as the life and organs of human beings. They are called dignity and in this particular case it’s wrong to kill the fat man to save the lives of others because we can’t measure the lives of different people in one single