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Kantian ethics: Happiness or Logic

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この記事は1年以上前に書かれたもので、内容が古い可能性がありますのでご注意ください。

I will be diving into a more philosophical approach to decision making, something that I have been interested in and am reading about recently.

I will focus on the two major laws of Decision making, Kantianism and Utilitarianism and why I believe Kantianism is the superior choice among the two.

Kantian Ethics

Starting with a basic introduction, Kantian ethics focuses on the results an action ultimately causes and provides a moral way to judge a situation and base our actions on it. It states that rational actions should be based on maxims and that
these maxims should be universally morally right. All actions should be evaluated based on these
maxims.
I believe it leads us to have a more justified reaction as we can clearly determine if the action we take is
morally right or not rather than basing our actions purely on our emotions.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism states that actions should be based on the amount of happiness it brings to a
person. It in my opinion provides an unstable algorithm and compels people to possibly usually
make inaccurate decisions as it uses happiness as its main deciding factor which is an extremely vague
and widely varying means to base our actions on.
An action should be carefully thought out and have a much more stable determining factor since it not
only affects the person but also the people surround him. Therefore I believe the Kantian ethics is more
appropriate in this case. I believe so because of the following reasons.

Why Kantianism?

Firstly, it considers the reason behind ones actions as its basis and focuses what’s morally right rather
than solely focusing on ones emotions.
Secondly, Kantian ethics provides clear and precise rules for making actions making it easier to
understand and take action unlike utilitarianism which lacks clarity in terms of
Lastly, Kantian makes sure that our actions don’t use others purely as means to achieve something
rather conveys that humans are not just means to achieve something. In the case of utilitarianism its not
considered incorrect to use humans as means as long as it is for achieving the greatest amount of
happiness.
Rachel Sirotkin says Kantian theory offers more precision than utilitarianism and that’s it much easier to
understand what’s right morally in Kantian ethics than utilitarian ethics. She believes so as the effect on
happiness is unclear and ambiguous while its more straight forward to determine if a person is being just
being used as means which would be morally mistaken.

Final Thoughts

Finally after going through all the different aspects of Kantian ethics including its rule of doing actions
that are morally right , its universal moral rules as well as its comparisons with utilitarianism and its
possible drawbacks.
I can conclude that although Kantian ethics does not come without any drawbacks, it is still a better
option in the case of decision making and taking actions than the rules and laws of utilitarianism. Its
drawbacks when compared to that of utilitarianism is considerably less crucial as well as it is much more
moral ,ethical and reasonable than using utilitarianism.

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