POST 6: HUME VS KANT AND MY MORAL SYSTEM

Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 03:30:27

i stick to the my own belief that human beings cannot define what is right or what is wrong because morality is relative. what is right for one is not necessarily right for another. even with laws imposed in our society, there are still exceptions; things like "abortion is illegal, except on cases where it threatens the life of the mother," or anything along those lines. so for me, rules and laws serve only as a guideline.

as for the reasoning behind MY moral system, it's simply intuition. i believe that human beings possess human nature good enough to decide whether something is right or wrong. so whenever i'm in doubt, i do what my inner-self tells me to. i could care less what other people think as right or wrong because even if majority is always right, there is always an exception, and i could probably be that exception. as for what my inner-self always tells me, anything that does not harm anyone is not wrong. smoking weed, for example, is not wrong, until someone gets out of control because of that and hurts someone else. same thing with alcohol; it's not wrong until you sit behind the wheel while you're still not sober.

hume's ethical theory is based on moral assertions that is innate in human nature. for hume, what determines morality is one's approval or disapproval on certain events. hume highly regards individual feelings because he believes that in them is asserted moral principles by default. these moral principles are a product of human nature, that is innate in every human beings. human nature is good, and therefore what comes from human nature is also good. hume argues that these moral principles are innately good because they are product of human nature. thus, he concludes that one's feeling of approval or disapproval is enough to determine whether an action is moral or immoral, for in society, approved actions are the ones that are socially useful and disapproved ones are mostly socially detrimental. morality, then, can be achieved by obeying this sense of approval, which in society is piled up into rules of justice. from this, i would say that hume would disagree with my reasoning. for hume what is right is what the society approves, while for me, what is right is what i approve, and i am ignorant toward the society's approval.

kant's ethical theory stems from going against the idea of skepticism. he claims that everyone is obliged to some duty, and only in carrying out the duty can a person be moral. kant's theory also relies highly on reasoning, for he claims that in reasoning can be found the grounds to certainty. these reasonings, kant said, have to be a priori, that is, does not require experience to prove true. using reasoning, kant develops the categorical imperative, that is, categories that one can use to test one's action to determine whether it is moral or not. in general, kant's categorical imperative says that an action is only moral and should be done if one can apply the moral principle behind such action to be true for everyone else. principles that "survive" this test are the ones that form a person's duty, to which that person is obliged. kant would also disagree with my reasonings, since for kant categorical imperative determines morality. although not all, but i am certain that some of the principles behind my actions are not true universally and hence will not survive the test of kant's categorical imperative, but regardless, if i believe that these actions of mine do not cause harm to anyone else, they are justified as being right.