KANT AND MILL
Immanuel Kant and john Stuart Mill are two important philosopers with different systems of determining the ethics of a given situation. Each of these philosophers answers the question of ? What is moral?' from totally different perspectives.
John Stuart Mill is an utilitarian. According to Mill, the ultimate goal in living is ?happiness'. All desirable things (wealth, power, health...) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
These desirable values are instrumental values. According to Mill, our only goal is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. We do everything only to have pleasure. We want to be wealthy not because of the wealth itself but we want wealth to be happy. Wealth and other desirable things are are like instruments to happiness. Parents always want well educated, well brougt up, well behaved children. But why? Is it because they think of their children or is it because they think of themselves? I think according to the utilitarians they want good children because they think of themselves, not their children. If they have good children they will be proud of their children and so they will be happy because to be proud of something/ someone brings happiness.
According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as the tend to produce unhappiness. Actions are not related with motives, they are related with consequences. Mill thinks that an action is rigth if it provides maximum happiness for maximum number of people. Then is it right to sacrifice minorities for the happiness of majority like i ...