Immanuel Kant

The dilemma of surrogacy, specifically custody rights, is resolvable under most state laws; however, judges often consider ethical theories in court case discussions surrounding the topic. Nearly any ethical theory could be applied to the question of surrogacy, yet it mainly encompasses three specific ones. Cultural Relativism, Kantianism, and the Justice Theory are all ethical ways of thinking that must be expressed to fully comprehend and debate the concerns of surrogacy use. Along with…

Trying to determine what the right thing to do in a situation may lead to an abysmal void. Michael Sandel, a professor of justice at Harvard, poses his students with many controversial situations that spark different arguments and questions. Along with the situations, he introduces philosophies and moral principles that back up the contrasting perspectives. One of the first things that Sandel presents is consequential and categorical moral reasoning. While a consequential reasoning focuses on…

In order to understand Aquinas’ metaphysics, one must understand the difference between essence and existence. According to Aquinas, there are two senses of ‘being’: one sense is that “those things [are called beings] that are sorted into the ten categories (of Aristotle); in the other sense [calling something a being] signifies the truth of propositions” (Aquinas, I). Then, Aquinas goes on to say that essence is derived from a being in the first sense. Because a being can be divided into ten…

Death is inevitable. It’s something we are all sure will happen, but don’t exactly know when it will happen. Some are ready to embrace death, while others run away from it. When it comes to the lives of those who are critically ill, while some would hold to any last string of hope they have as long as they are alive, and others are ready to stop the chronic pain. For those ready to pull the plug, euthanasia is here to help. Basically, euthanasia (or assisted suicide) is when the doctor of a…

Moral duties are those that are assigned by us and us alone. No one can tell us how to make decisions. Our moral duty is defined in the way that we are raised, the choices we make, and the people we have made allegiances with. No one person’s moral duty is more right than any other person’s duty. As soon to be officers of the Navy, we are given immense power to define both our duty and moral duty. Duty to the Constitution and to protect and serve our country is separate, or at least should be…

history, there has been many debate over theorist in which set of laws is right to live by. Natural Law is one of the oldest theory of law that deals with human nature and sets of moral principles from god. Natural Law theorist such as, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke obey the laws that promote the greater good for society. The other law is Positivism; Positivism is the opposite of natural law where humans such as, the government and legislatures create the laws. Positivist theorist…

Lecretia Seales passed away at the end of 2015, fighting for her life and the right to have an assisted death. Rather than suffering through the end stages of a terminal brain tumor, and all the complications that arise with that, Lecretia started a legal battle with the New Zealand court system to be able to pass away on her own terms. Unfortunately, Lecretia passed away because of her complications of the tumor, but her story created a public debate within New Zealand society, one that is…

Kant believed that an action is considered moral when “the will” is perfectly aligned with “duty.” Morality is only dependant on the purity of the will, not in the action made, decision made, or its consequences. The will is the faculty that animates our body actions and can be trained for good or bad. Duty is independent of the will and means to be obedient to moral law. Kant also believed that all rational beings owe a duty to rationality…

action. In order for an act to be morally right it must come from the right motivations, and according to Immanuel Kant, the only valid motivation was Duty (Tait, pg.12). According to Kant we must all follow the Categorical Imperative which has two formulations. The first is, “ Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law,” (Kant, pg. 31). This means that when we try and choose a moral rule to follow we should be able to…

concerning myself with those of Edmund Burke, as written in “A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin Of Our Ideas Of The Sublime And Beautiful”, though many of the other ones are also of great academic merit, especially those of Joseph Addison and Immanuel Kant. I read in an article that Burke proposed that all range of human feeling could be categorised as either sublime or beautiful. Whilst that article appears to have gotten the wrong idea, Burke was the first to say in writing that the…