Topic > Theories of Utilitarianism and Deontology and its Application within Society

This essay will examine the purpose of individuals regarding moral and ethical behavior. John Mills and Immanuel Kant, two renowned philosophers, theories of utilitarianism and deontology respectively, have been considered great explanations of morality and ethics. This article will outline the basis of these two opposing philosophies by describing the relative perspectives of each and show which theory is suitable to be applied in practice within society, and will also show how they apply to hypothetical topics such as Rescue I and Rescue. II. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Mill's beliefs towards the ideals of morality and ethics are built on the aspect of utilitarianism; his views are based on moral interactions conducted for the benefit of society. Mill believed that consequences were the relative net result of actions performed. His theory was inspired by theories such as hedonism and universal consequentialism. Mill's theory essentially shows that the morality of a choice is more or less quantified by taking the negative implications and subtracting them from the positive values ​​of the decision to obtain the overall net value. Utilitarianism is also defined by the fact that “the ends “justify” the means”. (Brink)Kant's theory of deontology is based on a person's ethical decisions regarding moral obligation and his conscience. This theory is intriguing and interesting because human motivation is not consistently pristine. The reason many people perform moral actions is because of possible reciprocity; Kant, however, believes that the truest motivation is simply “doing the right thing.” This means that choices are focused on what is right regardless of the personal effects of the outcome, so in short motivation should be focused on doing the right thing regardless of intrinsic motivation. (“Kantian Ethics,” n.d.) To describe the first scenario, Rescue I, rescuers choose to save a group of five people in danger and unintentionally kill another person also in imminent danger somewhere else. From Mills's point of view, a utilitarian point of view, Mill would justify this reasoning with the quantified notion that the sum of the positives is greater than the net of the negatives with four lives saved; the opposite choice would have left five people dead, suggesting the idea of ​​increasing the benefit to a larger number of people. Mills would say that saving the group of five individuals over the single one would be the greater choice because the happiness of the sum of the five surviving families would be greater than that of just one. From Kant's deontological perspective, the justification would be Rescue I reasoning with the idea that the rescuer's motivation was to save lives without any prior motivation for doing so. Coupled with the fact that they were informed of the group of five's dangerous situation before the group of one's dangerous situation, it would seemingly deny any ulterior motive, and as long as the goal was to save lives, their actions would be morally good even if a person would die. The Rescue II scenario essentially describes rescuers who must save a group of five people in imminent danger, but would have to run over an individual on the way to save the other five. Similar to Rescue I, Mill's view would still say that the positive aspects of saving five people would outweigh the negative aspects of losing one individual; and just like in Rescue I, the total happiness of"..