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Aristotle Vs Kant

Decent Essays

experience” (GGM, Pg. 5, 38-39): This means we have use reason to make our choices rather than looking to our experience or a person who we consider to have reason as with Aristotle. This leads to Kant to explain when an action has moral worth. Specifically, “an action has moral worth when it proceeds from duty, not inclination, that is, pleasure and what we feel like doing” (GMM, Pg. 13-16). He establishes three propositions: “the worth of an action lies in the principle of willing, the outcome or consequence are secondary consequences, and finally, an action must proceed out of respect for the moral law” (GMM, Pg. 13-16). This may very well go against Aristotle’s argument of happiness. When Kant says that “most things are good, but not without qualification or limitation” (GMM, …show more content…

9). In particular, he’s speaking about how happiness is not good without limitation. For Kant, the good, is an action from the good will. Thus, only happiness arising from a good will is truly good. In fact, Kant does not aim, in the first place, for pleasure along with moral action but only moral action done from a good will. For Kant, a good will is ruled by reasons alone, and is not susceptible to passions or inclinations. This leads Kant to develop the notion of an imperative; meaning that as rational agents, when we judge that we ought to do something we are subjects of an imperative or command. The imperative merely is used to describe a goal and prescribes a means necessary to achieve this. The imperative can be split into two categories; Hypothetical and categorical. According to Kant the categorical imperative is an action that necessary to performed mainly because it has to do with actions as such as opposed to ones

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