Duty, Kant, and Deontology

Abstract

Kant, like Bentham, was an Enlightenment man. Morals must come not from authority or tradition, not from religious commands, but from reason. Kant also thought he had it sorted. The funny thing is that his answers were almost the opposite of Bentham’s. Kant started not with pain and pleasure but rather with the fact that mankind’s distinguishing feature is our possession of reason. Therefore, it follows that all humans have universal rational duties to one another, centring on their duty to respect the other’s humanity. To Kant, all humans must be seen as inherently worthy of respect and dignity. He argued that all morality must stem from such duties: a duty based on a deontological ethic. Consequences such as pain or pleasure are irrelevant. (Well, he was German). To Kant some duties are absolute. These are the obligations to do certain types of actions. Kant calls this general type of obligation a categorical imperative, that …