The Role Of Happiness On Kant s And Mill s Ethics

The Role of Happiness in Kant s and Mill s Ethics Corey Guitard (0241740) Introduction to Ethics November 18th, 2015 Philosophy 2701 Dr. Rupen Majithia Words: Immanuel Kant refers to happiness as contentment (Kant, ) whereas John Stuart Mill refers to it as the pursuit of pleasure and the absence of pain (Mill, p.7). Kant does not base his ethics on happiness. Instead, he argues that morality is based on our duty as a human (Kant, ). To do what is right for Kant is to do what is instinctually moral without giving thought to the overall happiness. On the other hand, Mill does in fact use happiness as the bases for his ethics. He proposes that actions are right if they promote overall happiness and wrong if they promote the opposite of happiness (Mill, ). In this paper, it will be argued that Mill s views on happiness are more reasonable than those of Kant s because happiness should be the base for ethics. Kant does not believe that happiness is important enough to base his ethics on. For him, happiness is not pleasure. It is not the virtuous or joyful feeling associated with living a moral life. It is simply the satisfaction with one s con dition. In this sense, happiness is put aside by Kant to focus on our duty as a human (Kant, ). He places emphasis on the respect we have for others in the way we live our lives. Everyone deserves this respect by virtue of being human. If everyone refused to use people as a means for their own personal gain and rather as ends out ofShow MoreRelated Ethical and Philosophical Questions about Value and Obligation977 Words   |  4 PagesQuestions about Value and Obligation I Recall the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics. Normative ethics deals with substantial ethical issues, such as, What is intrinsically good? What are our moral obligations? Metaethics deals with philosophical issues about ethics: What is value or moral obligation? Are there ethical facts? What sort of objectivity is possible in ethics? 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