Kant’s Ethics: Core Idea

Kant believed that people’s actions should to be guided by moral laws, and that these moral laws were universal. He held that in order to apply to all rational beings, any supreme principle of morality must itself be based on reason. Even if a person’s is doing good should and it cause harm, the good will behind the efforts is still good.According to Kant, Our focus should be on what we ought to do. Our sense of “ought to” is called dutifulness. , what we want to do is of no significance.

Kantianism is based on the premise that rational beings can use logic to explain the “why” behind their solutions to ethical problems. What matters is the motivation behind the act and not the consequences.The 4 possibilities of actions based on Kant’s intention/motivation vs. consequences are

• good intentions, right act (you did the morally right thing and you get credit for it)
• good intentions, wrong act (you did the morally wrong thing but you are not to be blamed for it)
• bad intentions, right act (you did the morally right thing, but you don’t get credit for it)
• bad intentions, wrong act (you did the morally wrong thing and you have to take the blame for it)

So for Kant, the blame or credit we attach to one’s intentions and the rightness and wrongness of what one did are separate and independent.Kantianism aligns with the intuition of many people that the same morality ought to apply to all people for all of history. These guidelines allow us to make clear moral judgments. For example, one such judgment might be: “Sacrificing living human beings to appease the gods is wrong.” It is wrong in North America in the twenty first century, and it was wrong in South America in the fifteenth century.

Kant states that “all people are created equal.” because it holds that people in similar situations should be treated in similar ways, and his theory delivers a moral agenda to fight discrimination.Finally his theory is summarised as a good person is someone who always does their duty because it is their duty whether they enjoy it or not.