Comparing Kantianism And Utilitarianism

Ethics is the study of morality, judgment and their relations. Within Ethics there are many ethical theories including Kantianism and Utilitarianism. Immanuel Kant believes in Kantianism, which is where the name comes from and theorists like Bentham and Mill believe in Utilitarianism. Moral theorists use their ways of thinking to aid everyday actions and situations; they even use their theories to take their side on moral issues. Kantianism is the theory began by Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, we were given reason to distinguish yourself from things and persons, to make up happy and to develop good will. Every human being has reason—has a purpose of developing good will. Kantianism believes the only thing in the universe that is good is human. As a human, we have the ability to develop good will. To become a moral …show more content…
The principle of utility is that an action is right when it produces the greatest happiness. The utility is to use the purpose of morality to improve life by expanding the number of positive acts that cause pleasure and diminishing the number of negative acts that cause pain. Bentham's procedure for using the principle of utility is to take each person and/or situation; look at the util and disutils based on duration and intensity for each, then identify the net utility; whichever has the higher utility will be the moral thing to do. For example, if a train is running on track and ahead the tracks split up. On one side of the track there is one person tied to the track, on the other side five people are tied to the track. One must decide whether to switch the course of the train to either track one—with one person tied, or track two—with five people tied. A utilitarian would change the course of the track to continue down track one. Saving five people and sacrificing one would produce the highest level of utils or happiness, because more people will