ETHC 445N Week 5 Discussion & Follow-up; Kant s Ethics and Our Duty (Option 1)

ETHC 445 Week 5 Discussion & Follow-up; Kant s Ethics and Our Duty Introduction Kant's famous First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative reads, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Kant taught morality as a matter of following maxims of living that reflect absolute laws. "Universal" is a term that allows for no exceptions, and what is universal applies always and everywhere. Don't forget about the second formulation of the categorical imperative which states, "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means." It is just as important. Initial Post Instructions For the initial post, address the following set of question: What are the personal and/or communal ethical factors that may be involved in determining the moral position of either side given a contemporary debate, such as those concerning animal rights, stem cell research, abortion, the death penalty, and so forth? Ethical values are essential for any individual. Ethics are moral principles that govern how the person, or a group will behave or conduct themselves (Greasley, 2017). Each person has their own set of personal ethics and morals. Abortion, one of the moral issues that divides many. The issue of the moral status of a fetus is thousands of years old. Typically, it is no longer discussed that the issue is the fetus’s right to life drawn on the concept of the soul but rather, is that of moral personhood, and the issue is whether fetuses have moral personhood at any stage of pregnancy (Greasley, 2017). To have moral personhood means that someone has a special moral worth that other people are required to acknowledge. We might think of all morally significant persons as members of a special moral community, where all such persons have moral duties, rights, and in general deserve moral consideration from one another (Greasley, 2017). Of course, the woman’s right to bodily autonomy comes in play when we talk about abortion. Women have the right to control their bodies, and this applies to the effects that pregnancy has on them. This is the strongest intuition from the liberal side, and it draws on a centuries-old conviction that people are entitled to a zone of freedom, which includes decisions about what happens to our bodies (Stark, 2019). A criticism of this argument is that all freedom has limits, and we do not grant free reign to people over their bodies. For example, I am not entitled to cut out and sell my kidney online, just because it is mine. More significantly, I do not have free reign over my body when other people may be adversely impacted by what I do. Most liberals agree that at some stage in fetal development the fetus obtains personhood, or at least potential personhood (Stark, 2019). At that point the interest of the fetus must be taken into account, and it might even override the interests of the woman. In all these cases, an extremely delicate subject or subjects are being dealt with where the principle of the right to life, freedom and the principle of non-aggression or harm to living beings is directly involved. If we look at it from this perspective, although it is not easy, I think that the most important thing is to put into play the need to preserve the dignity of the living beings involved in the debate, including, of course, humans. Ethically speaking from Kant's perspective no one should be a means to an end. For this reason, in all the cases proposed, those involved inthe debates, that is, humans and animals, must be seen as ends in themselves, from their own dignity and their rights to freedom and life, and not as means to the end of other (Stark, 2019). To a certain extent I have always considered the formulations of Kant's categorical imperative as a kind of utopia, not totally unrealizable, but increasingly remote from the real possibility of its concretion. Reference: Greasley, K. (2017). Arguments about abortion: personhood, morality, and law. Oxford University Press. Stark, P. (2019). My body, my choice? Why bodily autonomy doesn't justify abortion. Hello, all! Here I am with my "log on the fire" question of the week! What does a good Kantian do if questioned by a Nazi about where Anne Frank is hiding? CMR Hello Professor, Kant seems to say that it is always wrong to lie and that if one does lie and despite one's good intentions the lie leads to the Nazi's capture of Anne Frank, then the liar is partially responsible for the killing of Anne Frank (Mertens, 2016). If this is correct, then Kant's account seems not only to require us to respect the Nazis more than Anne Frank but also that somehow, we can be responsible for the consequences of another's wrongdoing. Kant does not argue that lying to the Nazis at the door is wrongdoing because it involves wronging the Nazis. The Nazi does not have a right to your information, he actually wrongs you by threatening you into telling the truth. So, of the Nazi and the liar, the Nazi is the one committing the crime, not the liar. To illustrate the logic of Kant's reasoning, let us first consider a case of lying not to a Nazi, but simply to another person. According to Kant, if someone asks you for directions and your lying answer sends them into an unsafe neighborhood where they are robbed, then you are partially responsible for the resulting robbery despite having no intention of the robbery (Mertens, 2016). Through lying, you have chosen to deceive another person with regard to the correct description of the world in which they act, and this deception is, in part, what allows the robbery to take place (Mertens, 2016). Hence, you are responsible for the bad consequences of your lie. Therefore, a person cannot be seen as committing wrongdoing against a person hiding in their house if they refuse to take part in the lying interaction with the Nazis. Kant maintains that because people have an innate right to freedom, a public court can neither give any of its subjects a right against others to be helped in this way nor can courts fail to respect people's rights to avoid wrongful interactions by telling the truth (Mertens, 2016). Reference: Mertens, T. (2016). On Kant’s Duty to Speak the Truth. Kantian Review, 21(1), 27–51.