Essay on Contrasting Kand and Hume on Morality - 1510 Words

Morality is central to all rational beings, whereby a moral action is one determined by reason, rather than our personal desires as suggested by Kant (1785) in contrast to Hume. (1738). Furthermore, Kant suggests that an action is moral only on account of its being reasoned, therefore the moral worth of an action is determined by its motives and not by its consequences. Exploring the works of Hume (1738) and Kant(1785) on morality and ethics, we will ask the question whether we should do what is morally right, even when you could profit by doing something wrong, and furthermore, we shall discuss morality as a type of game, yet something you cannot opt out of, as something Foot describes as inescapable. (Foot 1972: 311). Morality and†¦show more content†¦For Hume, reason alone can determine how something is useful to us. He distinguishes between artificial and natural virtues; with artificial virtues depending on social structures, such as chastity, and natural virtues which are created in nature and are more universal for example friendship. A major argument for Hume is that reasons do not govern our actions, in fact reason is a slave to the passions.(Hume in Signer 1994). Hume says that in fact our actions are cause by a combination of value and emotion. In fact, reason influences our actions in only two ways: by guiding passions to focus on objects and by uncovering connections between events that will in fact create passions. The judgments a person makes about relations of ideas or about ideas themselves may be reasonable or unreasonable, but the judgments do not result in anything other than opinions. For the moral method to work, the judgments must stir up passions, which then lead us to act. If we are to consider both Kant and Humian ethics, the differences are many from their very definitions. Kantian ethics rely on rationality, whilst for Humian ethics assert that reason alone is not enough to ensure action, instead its our passions. So the qu estion is, why should we act morally good if we could profit from behaving morally bad? Kantian ethics would say that we have a duty to act morally good, but where