Immanuel Kant

means to your end.” -Immanuel Kant Kantianism argues that we must act out of our duty or acting from a moral law. In addition, it is our motives which are to be judge and not the consequences of the action. I will be focusing on patient centered deontology  Patient Centered Deontology believes people have the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one's consent and not using another for other’s benefit. For Deontology to work Kant created the…

Albert Einstein once said, “only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” Einstein’s quote highlights that living unselfishly is like living life as a whole new person. In regards to living unselfishly, as human beings we are considerably selfish. Throughout the adolescent stage in our lives we are taught, “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” but why are there circumstances where treating others with the same respect that we languish is forgotten? The answer to this may be…

In chapter three of Human Kindness and The Smell of Warm Croissants, philosopher Ruwen Ogien describes a thought experiment involving a surgeon, a healthy young man and five patients who need to undergo a transplant. In this scenario, the surgeon is presented with two courses of action, either kill a healthy young man to save the lives of the five patients or to let the five patients die. The purpose of this essay is to expound how two different moral theories would decide which course of action…

they live in. Some choose to stay strong with their head held high while others show weakness and defeat by giving in. Having good morals can drastically affect the life that you choose to live. Making the right decisions is completely up to you. Immanuel Kant once said “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” This means that having good morals does not result in happiness but being worthy of…

Kantian and utilitarianism are both ethical systems which originate from the normative side of ethics that focuses on how people should act. These theories facilitate in the process of reaching a conclusion on appropriate actions that would be considered as morally right or best. They guide knowledge to a conclusions when situations are complicated and require an attention to details that involve difficult decisions. As Kantian and utilitarianism sit at polar ends of the normative ethics…

Immanuel Kant is a well know German philosopher who is considered to be the central figure to modern philosophy. In 1785, one of his famous works, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, was first published. This text is split up into three section, and within the second section is Kant’s well known moral theory. This theory states that everything in nature works according to laws and in order for a law to be a moral law, it must be a universal law. These laws apply to all rational beings,…

aware that at the end of the day he will come face to face with his creator and will be expected to give an account of his life on earth. God is a necessity for morality. Immanuel Kant in his ethical works affirms that morality requires God, for without God nothing really matters. (ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/kants-argument-for-faith-in-god/). God becomes the basis for moral behaviour and without God everything becomes permissible. Without an absolute standard, morality would be…

In Antigone, by Jean Anouilh, the character Antigone best represents the ethical idea of the ethic of duty. The ethic of duty, according to Immanuel Kant, is that “we recognize our duty to behave morally toward all humanity and act accordingly,” (Ethical Ideas 292). This means that no matter what, people find a way to treat others right. Throughout the play, she continues to want to go bury her brother since she knows that is what is right. No matter how many times her Uncle Creon tried to talk…

In this paper, I will argue that people who should be considered to be altruistic are those who act magnanimously to those outside of their family or general social group. I will use examples such as kin selection, animal altruism, and arguments against psychological egoism to assist in proving my thesis to be true. I will also address a counter argument made by some psychological egoists who believe that due to most people feeling pleasure while doing good things for others, that there are no…

supported by Churchman (1971) who reported on the various philosophical perspectives of a Delphi study (Tapio et al., 2011, p.1626). They have categorised these perspectives according to the following philosophies of John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, George Hegel and Edgar Singer (Hammer and Boggs, 2011, p.254-256). In addition, Mitroff and Turoff (1975) have also emphasised…