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Summary Cantianism
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This is a summary of Kantianism. With all of my summaries for this course I passed it with an 7,4!
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KantianismKant remains the most important voice of opposition to utilitarianism
Consistency and Fairness
People are inconsistent to the extent that they treat similar cases differently.
Our deep opposition to unfairness, and the resulting importance we attach to
consistency, are revealed in two very popular tests of morality. Each takes the form
of a question:
1. What if everyone did that?
This question is really shorthand (afkorting) for the following test: if disastrous
results would occur if everyone did X then X is immoral.
For cases as if everyone used the emergency lanes in traffic jams then
ambulances would often fail to provide needed help the test works easily.
But the test fails for other cases and so it cannot serve as a reliable way to
learn the morality of actions.
The real problem for this test is that it makes the morality of an action
dependent on how it is described
2. How would you like it if I did that to you?
This is a direct application of the golden rule, which tells you to treat others as
you would like to be treated.
The golden rule is the classic test of morality. It is clearly meant to be a test of
consistency. If you wouldn’t want to be slandered or exploited then don’t do
such things to others and if you want to be slandered then do such thing to
others.
The golden rule cannot be true because the golden rule makes morality
depend on a person’s desires (verlangens). Most of us don’t like to be hit and
so the golden rule forbids us from hitting others. But what about masochist
who enjoy being hit. The golden rule allows them to go around hitting others
but that is bad.
The golden rule also fails to give us guidance (houvast) on self-regarding
actions (zelfingenomen handelingen). That is not a problem for most people
nowadays since it is now unusual to think that we owe moral duties to
ourselves. But in Kant’s time self-regarding duties were widely endorsed.
Because the golden rule sometimes gives the wrong answer to moral
questions it cannot be the ultimate test of mortality
The Principle of Universalizability
Kant felt the appeal (aantrekking) of the 2 tests. He thought he found an alternative
for the 2 tests in the following standard: the principle of universalizability.
The principle of universalizability: an act is morally acceptable if and only if its maxim
is unverbalizable.
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