Egr 402 Final Review

Karl Salting EGR 402 Dolske Final Review Kant: 2. What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative? Kant’s first formulation of his categorical imperative is, “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it would become a universal law.” This imperative is given as the criterion (or second-order) principle by which to judge all other principles. If is it possible that everyone would do some type of action then there is an application of the categorical imperative enjoining that type of action. If not, then that type of action is morally wrong. Kant argues that we cannot make lying promises because keeping a promise in the first place would have to have the intention of keeping the promise or having an intention to do so. Kant offers a second formulation of the categorical imperative: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end and never as merely a means only.” Each person can never be exploited or manipulated or merely used as a means to our idea of what is for the general good. Rational beings are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action .This results as a systematic union of rational beings by common objective laws, i.e., a kingdom which may be called a kingdom of ends, since what these laws have in view is just the relation of these beings to one another as ends and means. 3. According to Kant, what are the consequences of making a promise when one doesn’t intend to keep it? The consequences cannot be so easily foreseen but that credit once lost may be much more injurious to me than any mischief which I seek to avoid at present, it should be considered whether it would not be more prudent to act herein according to a universal maxim, and to make it a habit to promise nothing except with the intention of keeping it. It is completely different to be truthful from duty then to be so from apprehension of injurious consequences. Kant states that it must be well considered whether there may not hereafter spring from a lie much greater inconvenience than that from which I now free myself, and as, with all my supposed cunning, the consequences cannot be so easily pointed out. Supposing that a false promise would become a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain pretenses.

- Talk about borrowing money in one of the four illustrations. 7. How did Saving Private Ryan employ Kantian ethics? More than any other philosopher, Kant emphasized the way in which the moral life was centered on duty. Duty as following orders – The Adolph Eichmann model – Duty is external – Duty is imposed by others  Duty as freely imposing obligation on one’s own self – The Kantian model – Duty is internal – We impose duty on ourselves “I had known the Categorical Imperative, but it was in a nutshell, in a summarized form. I suppose it could be summarized as, ‘Be loyal to the laws, be a disciplined person, live an orderly life, do not come into conflict with laws’—that more or less was the whole essence of that law for the use of the little man.” Mill: By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between "happiness" and "contentment," claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in his statement that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. The qualitative account of happiness Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in On Liberty. As Mill suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to mankind "as a progressive being," which includes the development and exercise of our rational capacities as we strive to achieve a “higher mode of existence". Thus the rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities. Utilitarianism could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. The way his account of happiness realtes to his ethical theory is that the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable, is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possibile in enjoyments, both in points of quantity and quality, the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity.

The multiplcation of happiness is the object of virtueL the occasions on which any person has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words to be a public benefactor. Happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality. Sartre: 5. When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at athe same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all 6. What anguish means is this: a man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but a law-maker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot help escape the feeling of his total deep responsibility. A man who lies and makes excuses for himself by saying “not everybody does that,” is someone with an uneasy conscience, because the act of lying imples that a universal value is conferred upon the lie. Anguish is evident when it conceals itself. Leaders and anguish. Abraham and anguish. Aristotle: 1. Moral virtues can best be acquired by practice and habit. They imply a right attitude toward pleasures and pains. A good man deliberately chooses to do what is noble and right for its own sake. What is right in matters of moral conduct is usually a mean between two extremes. Moral virtue is the outcome of habit. From this fact it is clear that moral virtue is not implanted in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can be transformed by habit. Similarly, it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doin temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing brave acts that we become brave. It is the same with temperance, courage, and other moral virtues, A person who avoids and is afraid of everything and faces nothing becomes a coward; a person who is not afraid of anything but is ready to face everything becomes foolhardy.

The same with running and wrestling; the rightamount will vary with the individual. This being so, the skillful in any art avoids alike excess and deficiency; he seeks and chooses the mean, not the absolute mean, but the mnean considered relative to himself. Good artists too, as we say, have an eye to the mean in their works. Now virtue, like Nature herself, is more accurate and better than any art; virtue, therefore, will aim at the mean. I speak of moral virtue, since it is moral virtue which is concerned with emotions and actions, and it is in these we have excess and deficiency and the mean. Virtue then is a state of deliberate moral purpose, consisting in a mean relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason. Accordingly, virtue, if regarded in its essence or theoretical definition, is a mean, thoughm if regarded from the point of view of what is best and most excellent, it is an extreme. We have no sufficiently shown that moral virtue is a mean, and in what sense it is so; that it is a mean as lying between two vices, a vice of excess on the one side and a vice of deficiency on the other, and as aiming at the mean in emotion and action.