Lecture notes
Bentham and Kant
Religious Studies AQA A Level. Complete Year 2 Ethics notes.
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Bentham and KantBentham’s Act Utilitarianism
People are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Things are good and bad according to the Principle of Utility.
Do that which gives the greatest happiness to the greatest number.
Brought about by using the Hedonic Calculus.
Bentham’s Principle of Utility seeks to maximise pleasure for a community.
Claims that all pleasures are of the same importance.
Evaluation of Bentham’s Act Utilitarianism
- It puts too much emphasis on the consequences of our acts, but we do not know the future
for certain.
o Counter: most moral situations encounter ‘general classes of acts’, that we know the
consequences of.
- It ignores motives, rules and duties, and these are morally crucial.
o Counter: rules are useful because they have been shown to bring about happiness.
Where they do not, it is right to abandon them.
- It ignores the minority rights and can even justify gang rape.
o Counter: injustice to the majority is worse than the injustice to the minority.
- It fails because it cannot bridge the ‘is-ought gap’.
o If you ask people what they want, they want happiness.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Only one good thing is good without qualification: the good will. The good will is
autonomous.
We are all aware of the moral ‘ought’, from this we can form an account of our moral duties.
Kant’s account is deontological, we develop moral rules, because they bind us to our duty.
Duty gives ethics a single focus, reason what you should do, consequences can no longer be
considered.
The categorical ‘ought’ does not mean that we should do ‘duty for duty’s sake whatever the
consequences’. The consequences have to be worked through, there has to be an original
link to people’s wants and desires.
There is only one Categorical Imperative expressed in three main formulations:
Universalisability: moral rules should be able to become universal law.
Practical Imperative
Kingdom of Ends
The categorical imperative is challenges by the existence of ‘radical evil’.
It culminates in the idea of summum bonum (the supreme good), where virtue is rewarded
with perfect happiness.
If ‘ought implies can’, then we ought to do why our duty tells us.
Freedom of the will is the core of morality, we have to assume we are free.
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