Kant

In our class discussions, we have begun talking about Kant’s views on morals and what he calls “the good will.” He opposes Aristotle’s view that humans live their lives in search of happiness. Kant believes that if we were to only seek happiness, there would be no point in having reason or logic; instinct would suffice if our only goal was to attain what made us happy. He believes that reason’s purpose, or telos, is to produce a will that is good in itself (“the good will”). And to achieve this good will, you perform morally good actions. 

In Kant’s view, the only way to be a morally good person is to perform morally good actions, that is to say actions that are done for the sake of our duty. For an action to be morally good, it should not be done because of immediate inclinations or self-interest. An action obtains its moral worth from its maxim, or the principle upon which you act. Thus, the goodness of your will is not derived from the results of your actions, but from the purpose behind your actions.

After talking about the three propositions of duty, we discussed Kant’s Categorical Imperative. It says that you should act only in a way that you can will the maxim of your actions as a universal law. In class, someone said that this sounded similar to the “Golden Rule.” But, there’s a big difference between the two. As Dr. Johnson pointed out in class, the Golden Rule is subjective; it deals your own personal views. The Categorical Imperative is objective; it deals with a way in which everyone “ought” to act.

Another difference could be made from Kant’s view. In his first proposition of duty, he say that a human action is not morally good if done in self-interest. The Golden Rule tells you to treat others the way you want to be treated. Kant could argue that this rule is an act of self-interest, and thus could not be considered a morally good action.

-SL