What is the significant difference between utilitarianism and ethical altruism?
Altruism may be seen as similar to utilitarianism, however an essential difference is that the latter prescribes acts that maximize good consequences for all of society, while altruism prescribes maximizing good consequences for everyone except the actor.
How do you use the categorical imperative?
Kant’s improvement on the golden rule, the Categorical Imperative: Act as you would want all other people to act towards all other people. Act according to the maxim that you would wish all other rational people to follow, as if it were a universal law.
What is Kant’s universal law?
The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature. Kant’s first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible.
Why does it matter how you describe an act when you are testing it against the categorical imperative?
Why does it matter how you describe an act, when you are testing it against the categorical imperative? The second formulation of the categorical imperative may be interpreted as requiring that we always respect others’ rationality.
What does it mean to use someone as a means to an end?
The word “end” in this phrase has the same meaning as in the phrase “means to an end”. The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself.
What is the Kantian ethical subject?
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: “It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will.” The theory was developed as …