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Kant In Moral Decision Essay

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Elif Çağatay
Zeynep Talay
ETHR105
07.08.2017 KANT AND ARISTOTLE IN MORAL DECISION
Have you ever ethically considered your decisions? Human being tends to act in terms of their profits, their happiness, their responsibilities and so forth. The majority of people do not criticize whether their actions, decisions, and choices are morally true or not. Throughout the history, many philosophers have tried to explain our decisions morally. One of these philosophers is Kant, another one is Aristotle. For Kant, our moral decisions depend on some duties and we ought to act as required by our choices but for Aristotle, if our decisions aim at some goods, they are absolutely ethical. In my opinion, Aristotelian arguments for moral decision …show more content…

First of all, in some situations, Kant 's concept of duty may be perceived as unnecessary and Aristotle 's percept of happiness can seem more logical. For example, if we obey the traffic rules in our daily lives, for Kant, we should continue to obey the rules even if streets are empty and there are no cops anywhere but for Aristotle, if we will not harm anyone, we can even run a red light because it aims our own goods by saving our time. On the other hand, the concept of duty does not aim our own goods. To be clear, Kant claims that categorical imperative is derived from human dignity which is related to choosing our own actions. People decide to do or to be something and they find themselves in categorical imperatives. This situation is not humane, unlike Aristotle 's moral decision. To demonstrate, for Kant, if there is a war, soldiers have to obey the rules to kill enemies despite that they do not want to kill somebody, many people die, and this is an ethical behavior but for Aristotle, it is not. To recapitulate, Aristotle and Kant’s ideas of moral decision conflict with each

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