Bentham and Kant

• Bentham's Act Utilitarianism

  - People are motivated by the desire to achieve happiness.

  - Happiness is pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

  - Assesses each situation independently of others and of rules and then chooses the action that maximises happiness.
• Principle of Utility

  - Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote pleasure and wrong in proportion as they tend to produce pain.
• Betham's version of the Principle of Utility = Greatest Happiness Principle


  - Maximising pleasure and minimising pain for all those affected by an action.

  - Everyone has an equal right to happiness, irrespective of their status or situation in life.
• Bentham's intrinsic good

  - A quality that is good in itself.

  - Happiness/pleasure is the sole intrinsic good.

  - Everything else at best is instrumentally good (might or might not have value depending on what it leads to).
• How to make moral decicions

  - Each situation needs to be considered in its own right.

  - Experience and generally accepted principles have a secondary importance.

  - Rules are to be obeyed only if they serve to increase human happiness.
• Bentham's approach to happiness

  - Quantity.

  - He did not distinguish between different types of happiness or attribute different values to them.
• Hedonic calculus

  - Pleasure and pain = measurable.

  - Hedonic calculus estimates the overall rightness or wrongness of an action.
• Use of hedonic calculus

  - Each person affected by the action needs equal consideration.

  - Individuals need to think of the general happiness and not just their own.

  - Seven criteria: intensity, certainty, duration, propineuity, fecundity, purity and extent.
• Challenge: - There is too much emphasis on consequences which we cannot be certain of.

  Response: - In most cases we can be reasonably sure. As in all aspects of life, we have to go by foreseeable consequences.
• Challenge: - Motive, rules and duties are seen as being of no importance.

  Response: - Motives are the same as the intended consequence, so they are considered. Rules and duties do have a place, but only if they serve the Greatest Happiness Principle.
• Challenge: - There is potential for injustice as the interests of minorities might be suppressed or ignored.

  Response: - It would be unjust to favour minority rights over those of the majority. In the case of injustices often cited, e.g. gang rape, applying all the hedonic calculus criteria would mean that such injustices would never be justified.
• Challenge: - Bentham's theory committs the naturalistic fallacy: 'is' does not mean 'ought'.


  Response: - Act utilitarians claim that the universal fact of human experience that all people desire happiness is enough to justify moving from 'is' to 'ought'.
• Kant's Categorical Imperative

  - Deontological.

  - Ethic of motive and duty.

  - Its rules are absolute and exceptionless.

  - It is an absolute, unconditional moral command.
• Kant: Moral Duty

  - Everyone has an inbuilt sense of moral duty.

  - It is not God-imposed, so it is a secular ethic.

  - We should do what is right because that is part of what it means to be a rational human being.

  - Our capacity for rational thought is an innate intellectual power that humans possess more or less equally and that distinguishes human beings from animals.

  - This appeal to reason means that it can be a universal ethic.
• Kant: Good Will

  - Good will is the only thing that is unconditionally, universally and intrinsically good.

  - Acts that result from intellect or personality are at best instrumentally good.

  - Goodness cannot be measured by consequences, as these are uncertain.
• Kant's definition of good will


  - Having the right motive and duty.

  - Duty for duty's sake means obeying a particular moral principle out of duty.

  - This is Kant's Categorical Imperative; an absolute demand.
• Formulations for Kant's Categorical Imperative (criteria)

  - These serve as criteria for the rightness/wrongness of an action.

  1. Universalisability of the principle underlying the action.

  2. Never treat people as means to an end, but always as ends in themselves.

  3. Act as if you were making laws for a kingdom that treated people as ends in themselves.
• Summum bonum (highest good)


  - For Kant, the supreme good, where virtue meets its appropriate reward of perfect happiness.

  - Humans should strive to be worthy of this happiness.

  - Obedience to the Categorical Imperative is the means of being worthy of it.

  - If the good will tells us that we ought to do our duty, then that is possible as 'ought' means 'can'.
• Three Postulates

  - Belief in the Summum Bonum & the Categorical Imperative entails making three assumptions about the world; these are the Three Postulates:

  1. Immortality

  2. God

  3. Freedom

  - According to Kant, the world is basically fair, so since the reward pf perfect happiness for virtue cannot be achieved in this world, there must be immortality.

  - Only God can provide immortality so he exists to guarantee the summum bonum.

  - We cannot prove that we have free will, but it is a necessary assumption since free will is at the heart of mortality.
• Strengths of Kant's Categorical Imperative

  - Categorical Imperative and the principle of universalisability are clear and effective.

  - Doing a bad act to bring about good consequences can never be justified.

  - Priority of reason over emotion promotes objective fairness.

  - Categorical Imperative promotes equality and justice, which are the heart of modern human rights.

  - Acting out of duty is always right.

  - A system of rules works.

  - Kant's theory provides moral laws that hold universally, regardless of culture or individual situations.
• Weaknesses of Kant's Categorical Imperative

  - There are some occasions where consequences are so severe that many think it is better to break a rule than allow awful things to happen.

  - Kant asks us to follow maxims as if they were universal rules, but just because we act this way, it doesn't mean others will.

  - Some philosophers question the existence of the moral law. Why should we believe that there is objective morality?

  - Universal rules aren't helpful in the real world where every situation is different. If no two situations are the same, morality should be relativist not absolutist.
• Bentham: - His attempts at social reform were strongly motivated by compassion and concern for others. His ethics stress the equality of all.


  Christian compatible view: - Jesus said he had to come to help those in need and that people would be judged on the basis of their response to those who needed help. In his letter to the Colossian Christians, Paul urged them to treat people with compassion and kindness.
• Bentham: - Was concerned with what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number. This meant that on some occasions, rules had to be set aside.


  Christian compatible view: Jesus sometimes acted situationally, putting accepted rules to one side in order to help others. For example, he healed on Sabbath.
• Bentham: - Self-interest is inevitable as it is an integral part of human nature.


  Christian compatible view: Jesus said, 'love your neighbour as you love yourself', so he recognised that self-love is important.
• Bentham: - No time for religion. Happiness is experienced on earth.


  Christian incompatible view: - Belief in God is central. Happiness is not just to be looked for in this life but is about eternal joy in God's presence.
• Bentham: - Rejected any idea of special rights: everyone's happiness counted equally.


  Christian incompatible view: - The Bible teaches the importance of paying special attention to the vulnerable. The Catholic Church stresses the 'preferential option for the poor'.
• Bentham: - Self-interest is inevitable as it is an integral part of human nature.


  Christian incompatible view: - Christianity encourages selflessness.
• Bentham: - Consequences alone matter, not rules, motive or the act itself.


  Christian incompatible view: - Jesus taught that if people gave to the poor just to impress others, then it has no moral value. He taught that inner thoughts are as bad as actions. Rules have a place and that good consequences can never justify an essentially bad act.
• Bentham: - Happiness in the sense of experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain is the sole intrinsic good.


  Christian incompatible view: - Jesus taught that the most important rules are love of God and of neighbours. Happiness is about human flourishing and is a by-product of a loving action rather than the goal.
• Bentham: Rules are of secondary importance and if they get in the way of the Greatest Happiness Principle, should be set aside.


  Christian incompatible view: - Many Christian ethical theories follow a rule-based morality.
• Kant: - The rational basis of Kant's ethics has links to Aquinas' thinking. The good will is something that is freely and rationally chosen.


  Christian compatible view: - Natural moral law is based on the use of reason. Aquinas emphasised the virtues which a good person freely chooses to practise.
• Kant: - The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative is universalisability.


  Christian compatible view: - Jesus' golden rule is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• Kant: - Thought that reality was beyond the world of space and time.

  - God was an essential postulate of his summum bonum theory, which was the union of virtue with perfect happiness.

  - His postulate of immortality was also a religious element.


  Christian compatible view: - For Aquinas, God is beyond space and time.

  - Humanity's goal is union with God after death.
• Kant: - Theory is secular in line with 18th century thought. Our sense of moral obligation comes from our nature as rational beings and has nothing to do with God.


  Christian incompatible view: - Belief in God is central to NML and Divine Command Theory.
• Kant: - It is a rule-based theory in which rules apply universally and without exception. The situation does not affect them.


  Christian incompatible view: - Jesus on occasion set aside the rules to allow for people's needs, and situation ethics takes this approach even further. Aquinas allowed for exceptions to secondary precepts in exceptional cases.
• Kant: - It is a theory about duty, not love.


  Christian incompatible view: - Jesus' teaching is focused on love of God and others.