Two Traditions in Ethics

Kant and The Categorical Imperative

According to Kant, if there is such a thing as morality at all, then there must be a categorical imperative.  That is, there must be a moral law, a law which applies to people regardless of their particular preferences, desires, etc.  (Hypothetical imperatives contain an "if" clause: "If you want X, then you should do Y."  Categorical imperatives are not "iffy" in this way.  They simply say, "Do Y!" or "Don't do Z.")  Kant thought that a categorical imperative would be an imperative which applied to all rational beings and applied to them simply because they were rational.  What would such an imperative say?

According to Kant, rationality involves consistency.  Consistency requires that I acknowledge the following:  if it is right for me to act in a certain way in a certain situation, then it is right for everyone else to act in a similar way in a similar situation.  Therefore, rational beings must acknowledge the following categorical imperative:  Act in such a way that the rule (or maxim) that you are following is one that you would be willing for everyone to follow.  (Kant said, the rule you follow must be one that you can "will that it should become a universal law" or "a law of nature".)

Kant also thought that the existence of a categorical imperative requires the existence of something which is intrinsically  and not just instrumentally  valuable.  That is, it requires the exixtence of something which is an end-in-itself and not just a means to the ends that we happen to have.  Rational beings are such ends.  Each of us recognizes this in our own case.  That is, we recognize that we deserve respect as persons capable of exercizing reason and choice.  And, again, consistency requires that we recognize that everyone else who has these capacities deserves the same respect.  Therefore we must acknowledge another version of the same categorical imperative: Act so that you treat all rational beings as ends and never only as means.

Bentham, Mill and the Principle of Utility

The other dominant tradition in modern moral philosophy is utilitarianism.  Accordingto utilitarianism, the only thing to consider when trying to decide what is right is what impact will my actions have on the happiness of those affected by them.   Rather than trying to figure out what moral rules are rationally required, we should evaluate the consequences of the various courses of action which are available to us in this particualar situation.  (This is sometimes called "situation ethics.")  The only rule or principle of morality is the so-called "principle of utility":  "Act so as to produce the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number."  At least in theory, this might involve violating various traditional moral rules (such as, "Never tell a lie"), if the consequences of violating the rule in some particular situation seem to be better than the consequences that will be produced by following the rule.

On this view, making an ethical decision is a matter of carrying out a kind of cost/benefit analysis, where not only my costs and benefits are important, but also the costs and benefits to everyone else who is affected by my action.  For utilitarians, everybody counts, and nobody counts more than anybody else.  (Thus, utilitarians share with Kantians the fundamental idea that morality is impartial, that we ought to consider everyone's interests equally.)

For Jeremy Bentham, who is generally considered the progenitor of this approach to ethics, happiness can be understood simply in terms of pleasure and pain:  the more pleasure people experience and the less pain, the happier they are.  But Bentham's successor, John Stuart Mill, argued that this view was too simple, that some pleasures are better than others.  ("It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied," said Mill.  "And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the comparison.")  So for Mill, the utilitarian cost/benefit calculation is a bit more complex.  We need to consider not only what people would in fact say that they wanted, but also what they would say they wanted if they had a better appreciation of the real value of different sorts of experiences.

Notice that it seems to be a consequence of the utilitarian way of thinking that it is not always wrong to treat one person as a means to other people's ends.  Such treatment might be justifiable if it produced a better result (if it produced a greater overall sum of happiness).  One person's losses might be outweighed by other people's gains.  Even people's rights to things like life and liberty might have to be sacrificed in some situations, if "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" seemed to demand it.