Karl Salting

EGR 402
Dolske

Final Review

Kant:

2. What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative?

Kant’s first formulation of his categorical imperative is, “Act only on that
maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it would become a universal
law.” This imperative is given as the criterion (or second-order) principle by which to
judge all other principles. If is it possible that everyone would do some type of action
then there is an application of the categorical imperative enjoining that type of action. If
not, then that type of action is morally wrong. Kant argues that we cannot make lying
promises because keeping a promise in the first place would have to have the intention of
keeping the promise or having an intention to do so.
Kant offers a second formulation of the categorical imperative: “So act as to
treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as
an end and never as merely a means only.” Each person can never be exploited or
manipulated or merely used as a means to our idea of what is for the general good.
Rational beings are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in
themselves, that is as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far
therefore restricts freedom of action .This results as a systematic union of rational beings
by common objective laws, i.e., a kingdom which may be called a kingdom of ends, since
what these laws have in view is just the relation of these beings to one another as ends
and means.

3. According to Kant, what are the consequences of making a promise when one doesn’t
intend to keep it?
The consequences cannot be so easily foreseen but that credit once lost may
be much more injurious to me than any mischief which I seek to avoid at present, it
should be considered whether it would not be more prudent to act herein according
to a universal maxim, and to make it a habit to promise nothing except with the
intention of keeping it. It is completely different to be truthful from duty then to be so
from apprehension of injurious consequences. Kant states that it must be well considered
whether there may not hereafter spring from a lie much greater inconvenience than that
from which I now free myself, and as, with all my supposed cunning, the consequences
cannot be so easily pointed out.
Supposing that a false promise would become a universal law that everyone
when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases,
with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become
impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would
consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements
as vain pretenses.
- Talk about borrowing money in one of the four illustrations.

7. How did Saving Private Ryan employ Kantian ethics?

More than any other philosopher, Kant emphasized the way in which the moral life was
centered on duty.

Duty as following orders

– The Adolph Eichmann model
– Duty is external
– Duty is imposed by others

 Duty as freely imposing obligation on one’s own self

– The Kantian model
– Duty is internal
– We impose duty on ourselves

“I had known the Categorical Imperative, but it was in a nutshell, in a

summarized form. I suppose it could be summarized as, ‘Be loyal to the laws,
be a disciplined person, live an orderly life, do not come into conflict with
laws’—that more or less was the whole essence of that law for the use of the
little man.”

Mill:
By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the
privation of pleasure.

Mill distinguishes between "happiness" and "contentment," claiming that the former is of
higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in his statement that it is better to
be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

The qualitative account of happiness Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account
presented in On Liberty. As Mill suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation
to mankind "as a progressive being," which includes the development and exercise of our
rational capacities as we strive to achieve a “higher mode of existence". Thus the
rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social
conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest
number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.

Utilitarianism could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of
character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his
own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit.

The way his account of happiness realtes to his ethical theory is that the ultimate end,
with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable, is an existence
exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possibile in enjoyments, both in points
of quantity and quality, the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity.
The multiplcation of happiness is the object of virtueL the occasions on which any person
has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words to be a public
benefactor.

Happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to
judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the
criterion of morality.

Sartre:

5. When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does
likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men. In
fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which
does not at athe same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose
to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we
can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us
without being good for all

6. What anguish means is this: a man who involves himself and who realizes that he is
not only the person he chooses to be, but a law-maker who is, at the same time, choosing
all mankind as well as himself, cannot help escape the feeling of his total deep
responsibility. A man who lies and makes excuses for himself by saying “not everybody
does that,” is someone with an uneasy conscience, because the act of lying imples that a
universal value is conferred upon the lie. Anguish is evident when it conceals itself.

Leaders and anguish.

Abraham and anguish.

Aristotle:

1. Moral virtues can best be acquired by practice and habit. They imply a right attitude
toward pleasures and pains. A good man deliberately chooses to do what is noble and
right for its own sake. What is right in matters of moral conduct is usually a mean
between two extremes.

Moral virtue is the outcome of habit. From this fact it is clear that moral virtue is not
implanted in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can be transformed by habit.
Similarly, it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doin temperate acts that we
become temperate, by doing brave acts that we become brave.

It is the same with temperance, courage, and other moral virtues, A person who avoids
and is afraid of everything and faces nothing becomes a coward; a person who is not
afraid of anything but is ready to face everything becomes foolhardy.
The same with running and wrestling; the rightamount will vary with the individual. This
being so, the skillful in any art avoids alike excess and deficiency; he seeks and chooses
the mean, not the absolute mean, but the mnean considered relative to himself.

Good artists too, as we say, have an eye to the mean in their works. Now virtue, like
Nature herself, is more accurate and better than any art; virtue, therefore, will aim at the
mean. I speak of moral virtue, since it is moral virtue which is concerned with emotions
and actions, and it is in these we have excess and deficiency and the mean.

Virtue then is a state of deliberate moral purpose, consisting in a mean relative to

ourselves, the mean being determined by reason. Accordingly, virtue, if regarded in its
essence or theoretical definition, is a mean, thoughm if regarded from the point of view
of what is best and most excellent, it is an extreme.

We have no sufficiently shown that moral virtue is a mean, and in what sense it is so; that
it is a mean as lying between two vices, a vice of excess on the one side and a vice of
deficiency on the other, and as aiming at the mean in emotion and action.