Kant

9 Pages 2240 Words

Kant objects most of all to the principle that one's own happiness can be the ground of morality. He rejects this possibility because well-being is not always proportionate to virtuous behaviour. "It is a very difficult thing to make a man happy from making him good. Most significantly, Kant renounces happiness as the principle of morality because it obliterates the specific difference between virtue and vices. He argues that Aristotle's precepts of morality can only contain the potential of learning to better calculate these differences.
In order to understand how it is possible and necessary to separate virtues and vices categorically, we must show how Kant develops his argument that one must subject oneself to a moral law. Kant argues that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean conflates virtues and vices and hence can provide no practical guide to moral behavior. For Kant, all that Aristotle's doctrine can account for is a worth that is relative to the unique constitution of the observer. Finally, Kant argues that Aristotle's is an example of how the dialectic of reason operates.For Kant, the concept of happiness cannot analytically contain that of the supreme good.
Kant's ethical theory, like Aristotle's, begins with an exposition of the properties which a moral agent must posses in order to acquire and exhibit goodness. Aristotle and Kant agree that the ergon of a human being is reason. Kant contrasts persons with things, the difference being that rational beings are designated as persons because their nature indicate that they are ends in themselves. For Kant and Aristotle, the moral agent subordinates inclinations and desires to reason.
By analogy, if happiness was the true end of a human then nature would admit of an inconsistency. Happiness could be better attained by instinct than by the weak insight of reason. "Nature would have hit upon a very poor arrangement in appointing the reason of the creature to the executor of this...