Kantianism: The Morality Of Spying

Kids are usually confronted with various challenges and obstacles in their growth, which are the worrying burdens for most parents. These curious guardians tend to have impulses to closely monitor their children's lives and have been notoriously known as 'helicopter parents'. To these nervous mums, dolls which record their conversations with the kids may be in heated demands. Yet, parents should never eavesdrop on their children. While the monitoring might satisfy their gratification of controlling, however, from a utilitarian mindset, the monitoring would ultimately undermine parent-child trust and cause the backfire of such implementation. Furthermore, care in this manner severely contravenes Kantian morality and results in the disrespect

However, they fail to foresee the long-term devastating consequence followed. Spying on the words of kid is not morally suggested as it intrudes their privacy, which disregards the first statement of categorical imperative in Kantianism. The first formulation refers to “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction”. (Immanuel , 1993, p.30). Maxims, which are usually formulated on one’s own, refer to the code guiding one’s conduct. The advocation of maxim universality, however, serves as the foundation for modern human rights, which include upholding privacy in high regard. Therefore, prioritizing the maxim of safeguarding children development at all costs over that of upholding human rights is not merely morally undesirable, but also impractical, in terms of forsaking human morality in the pursuance of self-interests. Collaborative endeavor is needed to maintain human rights and even the slightest intrusions of these values are both sensitive and intolerable, as there would be no guarantee that these “exceptions” would not be repeated or expanding and exerting its power to other occasions, giving rise to more serious violations. Therefore, maxim universality should be strictly observed and never ever be overridden by self-interests or impulses which are not inductive to the ultimate well-being of mankind. The eavesdropping, in this sense, is not