Kant and Reasons
Kant and Mill’s ideas of morality are vastly different with reasoning being one of the largest aspects of this difference. Mill clearly believes that only the consequences should be taken into account when deciphering the morality of an action while reasons are a large part in Kant’s categorical imperative theory. One specific act Kant writes about is suicide. He states that it is immoral to kill yourself because if you do it, you are doing it out of “self-love” to stop the pain and suffering you are experiencing in your life. But according to Kant, self-love is the inclination to preserve life, contradicting the inclination to stop life because of self-love, therefore, this action would be immoral. Through this example, Kant illustrates how reasons decide what is moral and what is immoral.
If this were Mill, he would probably agree with Kant that it was immoral, but not in the same way. According to Mill, the morality of an action is based solely on its outcome. If the overall happiness was calculated, or if past experiences were used, we would conclude that killing yourself is immoral because it decreases overall happiness. Your happiness would be neutralized, but all of the people who love you would be greatly dissatisfied, therefore, making suicide immoral.
Even though both philosophers would probably agree on the fact that suicide is not the right thing to do, they would have some disagreement on how they arrived at this conclusion. This example demonstrates how different Mill and Kant’s ideas really are.
ndianapal1 said,
June 18, 2007 at 7:06 am
i like what you have said, you definitley understand it. I picked this topic to write about too. I don’t understand . doesn’t Kant want us to do things without inclinations, and this being said, wouldn’t we not kill ourselves partly because of this?
Victoria said,
June 18, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I like how you compared Kant and Mill. You are right that they will both come to that same conclusion but they go about it in different ways. Mill is more straight foward when comes to this and Kant beats around the bush,,. I can explain that better but I cannot think of how to say what i want.
Harpreet said,
June 19, 2007 at 11:32 pm
I like the way you combine both of author’s thories or work together. I do agree with you. I think Kant is being more strict about his arguments. Overall, I will prefer Mill over Kant.