文档介绍：: Problems of Philosophy
Prof. Sally Haslanger
December 2, 2001
Kantian Ethics (and more on famine)
So far we've looked at egoist and utilitarian approaches to ethics. The main objection we considered to egoism was that it
failed to modate mon sense idea that morality involves a kind of impartiality, at the very least it seems that
we should not be morally prohibited from taking an impartial stance; yet egoism requires that you count yourself as more
important than anyone else in your deliberation, so seems to require a deep and systematic partiality towards oneself.
Utilitarianism, however, took the opposite extreme: on a utilitarian view your happiness counts for no more or less than
anyone else's. What matters is producing through your action as much (average) happiness as possible; there is no moral
basis for partiality towards or against anyone capable of happiness. Each of us are to be counted exactly the same. We've
also seen how a modified version of utilitarianism (in Singer) might have us respond to the plight of others who are
suffering grave misfortune (., famine). To some minds, utilitarianism (and views like it) go too far in valuing
impartiality.
The question now is whether there are further approaches to morality that might have different results, in particular, ones
less extreme on the partiality/impartiality spectrum. The