Kant seems to feel that wealth, friendship, and other things that are gained are not good things. He says that the only true good thing is a good will, for the things attained by such are not good by themselves yet through a good will it is good. Kant feels that nature did not intend for us to have a natural happiness. If this were to be then we would have an instinctive nature as to how to find this happiness. He feels that reason and knowledge is intended to produce good will and not happiness. This will hopefully lead to good things. Kant feels that the only way something is good and has moral value is if it is done because of a duty to do it. However, only if the goal is not for personal attainment. He feels that you must not do it for duty; you must do it because of duty to do something. Kant says duty is �the necessity of acting from respect for the law.�
Kierkegaard feels that living life to merely perform duty is against an ethical way of life. He says that it discredits the ethical. �The ethical is defined as duty, and duty in turn as a multiplicity of rules, but the individual and duty stand outside of each other.� Almost saying that doing strictly your duty is almost legalistic in a way. You never care about anything other then what is required, beyond that there will be no morals. He feels ethics are woven in with personality and not duty. He states that duty can be taken as an external relation yet as he says the derivation of the word actually was meant as an internal one. He feels that a persons decisions are what determines his character and moral code. He states that the heart of human existence is in the will. The way a person chooses is determining in their ethics. Ethical choices are strict and help to find yourself, where non-ethical choices are not and have brief effects on your life as a whole. He states that your choices between good and bad, right and wrong, will show your personality. However, he feels you must think in order to have a choice in this. For it is in your will that you have ethics. In this way Kant and Kierkegaard seem similar. He feels the aesthetic way of life is pursuit of pleasure and the condition of enjoyment of this is eternal. He states we must find an internal enjoyment. It�s in your capability and not your personality. To be happy you must live ethically and choose to help others and yourself. Otherwise you are just another person in the world. He feels we must make a leap of faith in order to believe in God since he feels there are no universal rules to provide guidance to individuals. Kant believes the opposite; he feels there is a set of universal guidelines for us to follow in our �duty�. Kierkegaard states that Christianity is not a set of doctrines but God�s revelation.
Question 7:
What I understood of utilitarianism is that it basically says everyone and anything is only worth what it does in relations to other things and we should all be classified into the relation we have with certain things. Then dependant on that category determines it's importance, our importance, how we'll be paid and etc. I could be very off on this though. He feels that you must associate utility with pleasure and with pain. Utility is as in Mills words �actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain where unhappiness is the opposite.� He states that to find the best pleasure you must enjoy all of them and figure out which ones are of high pleasure and low pleasure. He means almost that it doesn�t matter how much pleasure you have as in number or instances but that it matter how great the strength of the pleasure. Quality over quantity. I didn�t really find where Epricurus� defines his hedonism but I see their differences in opinion over pleasure. It seems Epicurus feels that in order to attain most pleasures in life we must be willing to sacrifice some pain to get there. The final victor being the pleasure we attain is far more worth the pain. He feels that all we do in our life is for mental and physical pleasure and the pursuit of that attainment. However, we must know the different levels of pleasure and which ones benefit us the most to find happiness.
Question 8:
Hume believes that morality is practical and derived from sentiment alone and not from reason. However, he feels reason does play a role in it. He is saying that due to what was given to us as human being we feel for one another and are built a certain way. To not commit murder, or cheat, or steal, and etcetera. We were meant to be good neighbors and that was built in our emotions. This is why we get so upset when someone wrongs us and why we don�t just think it through reason. He feels that the sole source of justice is utility. He feels that a persons morals and passions do not matter individually and they are for society as a whole. He feels that we are merely built to be concerned for others. This he feels is a universal attitude.
Kant I feel would probably agree in a certain respect with his utility argumentation since it has to do with duty towards others which they both seem to agree with. However, Kant goes more off of a willful nature and something you must not think of, where Hume seems to make it a more conscious thought. I had trouble understanding these sides of things so I hope I grasped at least some of it.
Question 9:
Did not complete reading to answer this question. And unfortunately due to me being at work currently the website that I would need to get to is blocked. So I�m not able to read it now.