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Kantianism Vs Utilitarianism Essay

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Humans have complex minds and motives, and it is because of this that we use “ethics” as a way to dictate behavior. However there are many opinions as to what exactly constitutes ethical behavior. These differing opinions stem from how the person was brought up to see the world, whether it be in wealth, poverty, culture, personal experiences and so on. Ethical theories are derived from a way at looking at certain actions and how to appropriately respond to them according to what that theory considers “ethically correct”. There are two ethical theories that I believe have the most prominence in society and I would like to discuss those – Utilitarianism and Kantianism. Utilitarianism is an interesting theory that aims to predict what the consequence …show more content…

Utilitarianism does have some solid guidelines as it strictly concludes that no matter what; the most happiness should become the outcome. Kant’s theory is also rather strict in this sense which is probably the only real comparison these two theories share. Unless you take into consideration a “Rule utilitarian”, where some acknowledgement of what is fair and just but it ultimately still always comes down to whoever can benefit the most. Although because of the rule portion of utilitarianism there is some leniency as to how judgement is able to be carried out whereas with Kantianism the judgement is still concrete and absolute – This is can directly contradict the previous similar comparison (McCormick, n.d.). There are more blinding differences between these two theories though. Kantianism suggests that if the outcome whether it produce more happiness is a result of taking advantage of humans to get there, then it should not happen, period. With utilitarianism this is not the case. Simply put, more happiness is better because it affects more people. So if uncomforting one person ultimately comforts ten then so it must

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