Introduction
Immanuel Kant is a very famous German philosophers and an opponent of utilitarianism. Categorical Imperatives is an ethical theory developed by him, to use as a guideline for morality. There are three main formulations in this concept, which are the formula of universal, the formula of humanity and the formula of autonomous. In this paper, I am going to use Kant’s ethical theory to find directions about the morality of abortion. Besides that, I will relate the findings of my case study to the flaws of Categorical Imperatives.
Chapter 1 Background
1.1 Immanuel Kant German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. He was born in the East Prussian city of Konigsberg in …show more content…
There are three of them.
Firstly, he said that Kant’s principle supply is not clear to resolve cases that have conflict of duties, that he didn’t offer any rank of the duties. For example, I have a duty to keep my promises but I also have a duty to help those needy.
Second, there is a difficulty in this theory that we are free to choose how we formulate a rule to test. In all likelihood, none of us would accept a statement such as “Lie when it is appropriate to do so.” But what about “Lie when telling the truth is likely to harm others?” We would be more likely to make this a universal law. Or, “Whenever a doctor has reasons to believe that the patient condition will be more severe is he is told the truth about his condition, then the doctor should lie.”
The third problem is Kant’s notion that we have duties to human beings. For example, in the case of abortion, is a fetus a thing or a person? How to define a human being? It’s very hard to make decisions in such situation. It’s about the way we look at them. We should respect the fetus or the
Immanuel Kant is a very famous German philosophers and an opponent of utilitarianism. Categorical Imperatives is an ethical theory developed by him, to use as a guideline for morality. There are three main formulations in this concept, which are the formula of universal, the formula of humanity and the formula of autonomous. In this paper, I am going to use Kant’s ethical theory to find directions about the morality of abortion. Besides that, I will relate the findings of my case study to the flaws of Categorical Imperatives.
Chapter 1 Background
1.1 Immanuel Kant German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. He was born in the East Prussian city of Konigsberg in …show more content…
There are three of them.
Firstly, he said that Kant’s principle supply is not clear to resolve cases that have conflict of duties, that he didn’t offer any rank of the duties. For example, I have a duty to keep my promises but I also have a duty to help those needy.
Second, there is a difficulty in this theory that we are free to choose how we formulate a rule to test. In all likelihood, none of us would accept a statement such as “Lie when it is appropriate to do so.” But what about “Lie when telling the truth is likely to harm others?” We would be more likely to make this a universal law. Or, “Whenever a doctor has reasons to believe that the patient condition will be more severe is he is told the truth about his condition, then the doctor should lie.”
The third problem is Kant’s notion that we have duties to human beings. For example, in the case of abortion, is a fetus a thing or a person? How to define a human being? It’s very hard to make decisions in such situation. It’s about the way we look at them. We should respect the fetus or the