What Is Kant Main Philosophy?
Utilitarianism cannot explain the significance of moral rights, but Kantian ethics can.
Utilitarians share a grand goal to maximize the collective welfare of every living creature on the earth. Although the goal is rather ambitious, the utilitarian actionscheme is a surprisingly straightforward one, which claims solving moral dilemmas requires no more than quantifying the goodness of each scenario and doing some algebra to compare them. With the universal guideline, the theory always knows there exists a morally right choice anytime and anywhere, hence expanding the scope of moral obligation. On the contrary, what is deemed as moral rights by utilitarians?
Unfortunately, utilitarians doubt if there is an absolute, essential, immutable existence that constitutes the nature of moral rights. In fact, when things are on an individual scale, any absoluteness would be a minor contradiction against the case-by-case fashion of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism falls short of explaining the significance of moral rights, while Kantian ethics regard the respect for humanity and moral rights as its cornerstone.
Why ought moral rights to be absolute? Because moral rights stand for everlasting justice. They are the bottom lines, the fundamental justification for accusation. If rights are subject to circumstances, justice thereby vacillates and discredits impartiality in its own sense.
Act utilitarianism assumes the opposite.
There is no intrinsically good action. Rather, whether an action is morally justified depends on its implication specific to the particular setting. And sometimes hurting others and causing pain could do good, counterintuitively. Say, if it is for the overall well-being, it is acceptable for a utilitarian to sacrifice a small part of the community, whatever the sacrifices are. Moral rights are most flimsy. Even though people “destined to be sacrificed” would fight such a fate, they lack the justification to do so.
Rule utilitarianism is a revision of strict act utilitarianism, which alleviates its demanding task of moral obligations.
This mild form of utilitarianism conforms to social norms and ethics intuitions by taking the long-run interests of the society into consideration. Despite the attempt to establish some moral common grounds, rule utilitarians cannot keep their rules intact from the overall welfare doctrine. As a result, the rules can be easily violated in extreme situations.
Now have a thought experiment and imagine a small population gets transported to some wild lands in less than a second by magic. They have no choice but to explore their ways out of the wilderness back to civilization and figure out orders and rules specific to their mini society. Given the scarcity of resources, people need to reconsider the situation. For example, would very sick people be deemed as burdens to society? If so, would it be morally justified to give up individuals who are unable to
make contributions in a limited sense? Rule utilitarians reject it by emphasizing the insidious, long-term effects like hurting trust between people and dampening confidence. But these foresighted philosophers neglect that the society may not even sustain into the future in the first place if it compromises norms. The intermediate position of rule utilitarians is not progressive enough to escape the ultimate trap of injustice.
Not agreeing with result-obsessed utilitarians, Kant distinguishes using people as mere means of achieving goodness.
Kant believes in the existence of moral duties and claims it is at all times superior to self-interest (Landau: 172). The statement follows the same argument of absolute morally right actions. Indeed, Kantian ethics states that justice is to respect others and refrain from using people as mere means if people are unwilling to do so. Simply ignoring the wills of others is equivalent to manipulating individuals as props (O’Neil: 79). Kant cannot emphasize more that human beings are rational and autonomous. In addition, he effectively defends the significance of respect along with the principle of justice.
To sum up, Kant points out it is not good to use people as mere means. Utilitarianism, one form of consequentialism, dismisses the process but focuses on the result. Using a way of backward deduction to decide what is good, utilitarians hardly identify absolute moral rights. On the other hand, Kantian ethics closes the loophole. By saying we should respect humanity in the first place and explains the significance of moral rights.
