Justification of Moral Ethics: Kant’s Deontological Theory

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Justification of Moral Ethics
For a human being, there no such thing as a fact unless it is not disputable. This argumentative nature forms the basis of very many theories (unapproved ideas). Aristotle, Kant, and Mill argue out that reason, virtue, happiness, and pleasure are some of the things that should form the basis in justifying one’s actions. In this paper, I am going to discuss the various insights of the various philosophers on moral ethics. I will use a case study so as to evaluate what each of the philosophers would say about the particular case study. Consider John who landed a job of his dreams. After successfully working with the task force on the launch of a new product, the company manager says that no word about the product to be said to anyone until after the release. Dom, John’s friend who is a journalist kidnaps John’s cat and threatens to kill it lest Johns opens up to him about the new product. John is at a dilemma, whether to save his cat or preserve the integrity of the job and have the trust of his employer. Let us take an instance that John decided to keep the company’s secret at the cost of his cat’s life.
In most cases, imperatives can be refuted in various ways, i.e. by showing the ethical dilemma is only apparent and does not really exist or cannot be solved logically. Another reason as Kant points out will be the emphasis on doing a greater good and a lesser evil (Kant, 7). For instance, in the above case study, keeping the company’s secret will be beneficial to the company, and will also strengthen the bond of trust between John and his employers. In this case, the company can be seen as the greater good since it is made up of many people and by keeping the company secrets, John would have served the greater good.
According to Plato virtue ethics constantly asks ‘how do I become a good person?’ which is simply answered “have virtues” (Plato, 3).A good person does a good thing, but a bad person ignores doing the good, so the bad person is ignorant, so people naturally want the good but due to ignorance, they land for the bad. The bad tries to justify. The bad can fail to do well. In other cases, one can mistakenly do the bad because he/she think is good, for instance, if John might have decided to save his cat, it means the company’s secret will be exposed. He will only assume that he is taking the action so that he can save his cat. But if we look it from a greater perspective, the actions of Joh will lead to an ugly scene at the company. There will be suspicion all over the place and the management will feel betrayed by the actions of John. John might even be fired from his place of work if the management realizes that he is the one who carried out the action. Also as mentioned in the introduction, the job that John got was something that h had been yearning for and losing the job once more would not be good.
An action is a purpose at some goal and its distinguished from a mere happening, like walking, then that is an action, but if the person stumbles and fall, then that is a mere happening to the person. Instrumental goals, money, are a physical reward for ...