Kant And Moral Nihilism

Throughout this course I have studied a numerous amount of theories. In this paper I will be sharing a handful of theories that I have studied. I will also compare and contrast some of the theories. The first theory that I came across was the theory of Moral Nihilism, also called ethical nihilism. Moral Nihilism is the belief that there are no moral truths. Moral nihilism would be consistent with an atheistic, materialistic worldview with no transcendent being who informs us about what is right and wrong as a revelation of his character. People who hold to this belief see values of good or bad as having no meaning. This does not mean they do not preferences as to certain behaviors, but the foundations of such preferences would be based solely …show more content…
They have many similarities and differences. The two philosophers are Aristotle and Immanuel Kant. When I compare and contrast these two philosophers you can see how they similar in their approaches to ethics because they both admire reason. But they also differ, the first main difference is that Aristotle creates a form of virtue ethics in which the highest goal is eudaimonia, while Kant, creates a deontological ethics in which the highest good is acting according to a sense of duty alone and following absolute principles. But that is not all of the similarities and differences that these two philosophers had. Some more similarities include the belief that morality is achieved by actions which seek the highest good, they both believe that reason should be employed in determining actions, they both believe that some actions are intrinsically evil. Another difference between the two philosophers is the consequence of an action. According to Kant, consequences of an action are irrelevant in determining whether an action is moral or not where as Aristotle asserts that we can face consequences of voluntary actions. The next difference is the highest good and how it is achieved. For Aristotle, the highest good is happiness which is achieved through virtuous actions whereas Kant believes that good will is the only virtue and is achieved through duty. The last difference that I saw was how both of Kant and Aristotle defined morality. For Kant, morality is defined by the performance of one’s duties compared to Aristotle who says that morality is determined by virtuous