Thursday, November 13, 2008

Using Your Reason Part 2 Kant's Deontology

Kant's deontonology is the opposite outlook of utilitarianism. A utilitarian is strictly concerned with the consequesnses of there actions and who benifits from them. A follower of Kant's deontology is only concerned if your action is right or wrong by itself. For Kant the presence of good will is what makes an action morally good, regardless of the consequences. Tehrefore even if you never accomplished what you intiended, you are still morally praiseworthy provided you tried hard to do the right thing. The categorical imperative is how we test if an action is right, all we have to do is determine whether we could imagine others doing to us what we intend doing to them. There have been many criticisms of kant's theroy such as that the categorical imperative actually implies concern for consequences. A big criticism of kant's theory is that if you were to do something that is considered wrong in your situation, how can we define what your situation is compared the rest of the people. There is a good example of this in the reading. Another problem with the theory is that there is now definition of rationality. Bentham belived in rationality as a tool however his moral views are quite different.
I dont think that Kant's theory a rational way of finding morals. you definately need to take in consideration of the consequences of your actions. For example, if there is a serial killer stalking your friend and your friend comes to your house to hide. You then tell him to hide in the closet, and then the killer comes to your door and asks you where hes hiding. You would have to lie or else your friend would be killed. kant belives that you should tell the killer the truth because you are not concerned about the cosequences. This is absurd. There are so many situations like this one and I dont believe that Kant's deantolgy is the best way in solving them.