Utilitarianism captures something genuinely important: consequences matter . The results of your actions in the world — who benefits, who suffers — are ethically relevant. Any ethical framework that ignores consequences is incomplete. But utilitarianism makes a structural error: it treats ethics as if it could be conducted entirely from the omniscient modality — standing outside the situation, surveying all the consequences, computing the optimal outcome. This is the God's-eye view. And no actual agent has it. The calculation problem isn't an accidental difficulty — it's a structural impossibility. The consequences of an action extend infinitely in space and time. No computation can capture them. Utilitarianism demands a mode of access to reality (omniscient, total, external) that is structurally unavailable to any finite being. The IDM's symmetry and continuity principles (Chapter 11) capture the genuine insights of utilitarianism — that effects on others matter (symmetry) and that outcomes over time matter (continuity) — without requiring the impossible God's-eye computation. They provide the same moral direction as utilitarianism in the cases where utilitarianism gives intuitively correct answers, while avoiding the monstrous results in the cases where it doesn't.
Discussion Questions
1. Mill says higher pleasures are qualitatively superior to lower ones. Is he right? Is reading philosophy genuinely better than playing video games, or is that just snobbery? Who decides? 2. Apply the utilitarian calculus to a decision you're currently facing. Can you actually compute the consequences? What information would you need that you don't have? What does this tell you about the practical usefulness of the theory? 3. Effective altruism — the movement inspired by Singer's preference utilitarianism — argues that you should donate your money where it does the most measurable good (e.g., malaria nets in sub-Saharan Africa). Is this the logical conclusion of utilitarianism? What does it get right? What might it miss? 4. The demandingness objection says utilitarianism asks too much. But is that a flaw in the theory or a flaw in us? Maybe morality is demanding, and we're just unwilling to meet the demand. What do you think?
Chapter Nine
Kantian Ethics
Duty, Reason, and the Moral Law
If utilitarianism says "look at the results," Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) says "look at the will." For Kant, the morality of an action has nothing to do with its consequences and everything to do with the principle on which it's based. A good action done for the wrong reason has no moral worth. And a principled action that happens to produce bad results can still be morally praiseworthy. This is a radical departure from utilitarian thinking, and it captures a genuine moral intuition: we don't just care about outcomes. We care about why people do what they do. A person who helps you because they calculated it would benefit them is different — morally different — from a person who helps you because they believe it's the right thing to do. Kant built an entire ethics on that difference.
The Good Will
Kant opens the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals with a bold claim: "There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, except a good will ." Intelligence, courage, wealth, health — all of these can be used for evil. The only thing that is unconditionally good is the will to do the right thing because it's the right thing. Not because it will make you happy, not because God commanded it, not because society approves — but because reason itself reveals it as the right thing to do.
Duty vs. Inclination
A shopkeeper who gives correct change because she's afraid of getting caught cheating is acting in accordance with duty but not from duty. Her action looks right but has no moral worth, because it's motivated by self-interest. A shopkeeper who gives correct change because she believes honesty is right — even when she could cheat without getting caught — is acting from duty. Her action has moral worth. Kant's point is not that you should be miserable while doing the right thing. It's that the reason you do the right thing is what makes it morally valuable. If you're only honest when it's convenient, your honesty is conditional — a means to your own ends. If you're honest because you recognise a moral obligation to be honest, your honesty is unconditional — and that's what makes it genuinely moral.
The Categorical Imperative
If morality is about acting from the right principle, what principle? Kant's answer is the categorical imperative — a single supreme principle of morality, expressed in several formulations.
hypothetical imperative says: "if you want X, do Y." It's conditional on your desires. "If you want to pass the exam, study." If you don't want to pass, the imperative doesn't apply.
categorical imperative says: "do Y, period." It applies regardless of your desires, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the situation. It's unconditional. And Kant argues that genuine moral rules must be categorical — they must apply to every rational being, in every situation, simply because they are rational beings.
The Universalizability Formula
"Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." In other words: before you act, ask yourself — could everyone act on this principle, without contradiction? If yes, the action is permissible. If no, it's wrong. Lying fails this test. If everyone lied whenever it was convenient, the institution of truth-telling would collapse, and lying itself would become meaningless (because nobody would believe anything). The maxim "lie when it benefits me" is self- defeating when universalised. Therefore, lying is always wrong. Stealing fails similarly. If everyone stole, the concept of property would dissolve, and stealing would be impossible (you can't steal what nobody owns). The maxim contradicts itself when universalised.
The Humanity Formula
"Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means." This is often considered the most powerful formulation of the categorical imperative. It says: never use people merely as tools for your own purposes. Every person is an end in themselves — a being with inherent dignity and rational agency that must be respected.
The word "merely" is crucial. You may involve others in your plans (hiring an employee, engaging a plumber). What's forbidden is treating someone only as a means — as a tool to be used and discarded without regard for their own purposes. The employer who pays a fair wage and provides safe conditions uses employees as means (to produce goods) while respecting them as ends (as people with their own lives). The sweatshop that pays starvation wages treats workers merely as means — as interchangeable inputs to a production process. The humanity formula condemns slavery (treating people as property — pure means), deception (manipulating rational agency rather than engaging with it honestly), and coercion (overriding someone's will). And it grounds human rights more firmly than any utilitarian argument: rights aren't contingent on producing good consequences; they're grounded in the inherent dignity of rational beings. This is why Kantians argue that it would be wrong to torture one innocent person even if doing so would save millions — the person's dignity is not a bargaining chip.
"Is it wrong to lie on my CV? To ghost someone? To use dating apps purely for validation?" The humanity formula gives sharp answers. Lying on your CV manipulates the employer's rational decision-making — treating them merely as a means to a job. Ghosting someone avoids your discomfort at the cost of their dignity — treating them merely as a means to your comfort. Using dating apps for validation engages others' attention and emotional investment with no intention of reciprocating — treating them merely as mirrors for your ego. The test is always: are you treating the other person as a rational being with their own purposes, or merely as a tool for yours?
The Kingdom of Ends
"Act according to the maxims of a universally legislating member of a merely possible kingdom of ends." Imagine a community in which every member is both the author of the moral laws and subject to them — where everyone both makes the rules and follows them. A kingdom of ends : a community of free, rational beings who treat each other as ends, governed by principles they all freely endorse. The moral law is whatever a member of this ideal community would legislate.
Perfect and Imperfect Duties
Kant distinguished between two kinds of duty.
Perfect duties are absolute prohibitions — things you must never do. Don't lie. Don't murder. Don't break promises. These admit no exceptions.
Imperfect duties are positive obligations that allow latitude in how and when you fulfil them. Develop your talents. Help others in need. You must do these things, but you have discretion about when, how, and to what extent. This distinction matters because it shows that Kantian ethics is not as rigid as it first appears. Perfect duties set absolute limits. But imperfect duties give you room to exercise judgment — to decide which talents to develop, which people to help, and how much of your time and resources to devote. The moral life, for Kant, is not a set of inflexible commands but a framework of absolute prohibitions within which you exercise responsible freedom. The challenge is that the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is not always clear. Is there a perfect duty not to let someone die when you could easily save them? Kant's system seems to say this is only an imperfect duty (you should help, but there's latitude). Most people's moral intuitions say it's much stronger than that.
The Standard Objections
Rigidity: Kant says lying is always wrong — a perfect duty with no exceptions. But what about lying to a murderer who asks where your friend is hiding? Kant notoriously bit this bullet — he said you should tell the truth even to the murderer, because lying violates the moral law regardless of circumstances. His reasoning: if you lie, you make yourself responsible for whatever happens as a result of the lie. If you tell the truth, you are not responsible for the murderer's actions — they are. The moral law requires honesty; the consequences are not your problem.
Most people find this absurd. It seems to elevate a principle over a human life. And it suggests that Kant's theory, taken strictly, can produce monstrous results in extreme cases — just as utilitarianism can. The difference is that utilitarianism's monstrous results come from calculating too much (sacrificing individuals for the aggregate), while Kantianism's come from calculating too little (ignoring consequences that obviously matter). Conflicting duties: What happens when perfect duties conflict? You have a duty not to lie and a duty not to let innocent people die. The murderer-at-the-door case puts these in direct conflict. Kant's system provides no mechanism for resolving conflicts between perfect duties — they're all absolute. In practice, this means Kantian ethics often gives no answer at all in the cases where guidance is most desperately needed. Empty formalism: The universalizability test doesn't actually tell you what to do — it only tells you what you can't do. And with creative description of your maxim, almost anything can be made to pass the test. "I will lie to protect an innocent person from a murderer" universalises just fine. So does "I will tell the truth in all circumstances." The test's results depend on how you describe the maxim, and Kant gives no guidance on the correct level of description. This is sometimes called the "tailoring objection": by making the maxim specific enough, you can always find a formulation that universalises. "I will break my promise whenever it's a Tuesday and raining and I'm wearing blue" doesn't generate a contradiction because the conditions are so specific that universal adoption would rarely occur. Consider a concrete case: you promised to meet a friend for coffee, but on the way you witness a car accident and stop to help. You break your promise. Kant's system says breaking promises is a perfect duty violation — always wrong, no exceptions. But virtually everyone agrees that stopping to help at an accident outweighs a coffee appointment. The Kantian can respond that the maxim should be stated more carefully — "I will break minor social commitments when emergency assistance is needed" universalises just fine. But this concession undermines the system's rigour: if you can always reformulate the maxim to get the answer you want, the test isn't doing any real work. It's rationalising your intuitions, not generating independent moral guidance. Ignoring consequences:
Sometimes consequences obviously matter. If telling the truth will get someone killed, it seems morally perverse to insist on honesty because of an abstract principle. Kant's refusal to consider consequences looks like a fetishisation of principle at the expense of common sense. Modern Kantians like Christine Korsgaard have tried to soften this by arguing that Kant's actual
position is more nuanced than the caricature — that he distinguishes between lying (always wrong) and misleading (which can be permissible). But the underlying tension remains: a theory that never considers outcomes will sometimes produce outcomes that any reasonable person would find horrifying. Motivation: Kant says only actions done from duty have moral worth. But this seems to devalue the person who helps others out of genuine compassion or love. Is the cold, dutiful helper really morally superior to the warm, caring one? Many people's moral intuitions say no. A mother who cares for her sick child out of love — not from any sense of duty — seems more admirable, not less, than a mother who cares for the child only because duty requires it.
Kant captures something genuinely important: the form of the will matters . The principle on which you act — its universalisability, its respect for persons — is ethically relevant. And the universalisability requirement is a specific expression of the IDM's symmetry principle: the same treatment (content) should apply regardless of who is agent and who is recipient (change of context).
But Kant operates entirely in the transcendent modality — pure formal principle, legislated from above, disconnected from the embodied, relational, feeling-informed reality in which actual choices are made. The categorical imperative is magnificent logical machinery with nothing to stand on. It can test maxims for consistency, but it can't tell you which maxims to test, or how to describe them, or when the formal principle should yield to the concrete situation. Kant gives us structure without ground — the transcendent modality without the immanent or the omniscient. The IDM retains Kant's insight (symmetry as a structural requirement) while grounding it in the immanent modality (the integrity of the interaction) and informing it with the omniscient modality (attention to consequences). The result is an ethic that is principled without being rigid, attentive to form without ignoring content, and grounded in relationship rather than floating in abstraction.
Discussion Questions
1. Kant says you should tell the truth even to the murderer at the door. Most people disagree. But if you make an exception for this case, where do you stop making exceptions? How do you prevent the erosion of the rule? Is Kant's rigidity the price of having principles at all? 2. The humanity formula says never treat people merely as means. Does this apply to your relationship with service workers, delivery drivers, social media followers? In how many of your daily interactions do you treat other people as ends in themselves rather than means to your purposes? 3. The kingdom of ends imagines a community where everyone is both legislator and subject. Does any existing community approximate this? What would it take to create one? How does this compare to the governance archetypes from Chapter 20? 4. Kant says only actions from duty have moral worth. A person who rescues a drowning child out of pure compassion — no thought of duty — has performed a morally good action, but Kant says it has no moral worth . Is this distinction important or is it a flaw in the theory?
Chapter Ten
Virtue Ethics
Character, Flourishing, and the Good Life
Utilitarianism asks: "What should I do ?" Kantian ethics asks: "What principle should I act on?" Virtue ethics asks a different question entirely: "What kind of person should I be ?" This shift — from action to character — is the distinctive contribution of the virtue tradition. Rather than giving you a decision procedure for individual choices (maximise happiness, universalise your maxim), virtue ethics says: develop the right character traits, and the right actions will follow naturally. A courageous person doesn't need to calculate whether courage is the optimal strategy. They're courageous. That's what they do. Virtue ethics originates with Aristotle (384–322 BCE), and after centuries of being overshadowed by utilitarianism and Kantianism, it was revived in the 20th century by philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Philippa Foot. For many people, it feels more intuitive than either of the other two: morality is about being a good person, not about following rules or running calculations.
Eudaimonia: Flourishing Aristotle begins with a question: what is the ultimate goal of human life? Not a specific goal (get a job, find a partner) but the final goal — the thing that everything else is for. He calls it eudaimonia , usually translated as "happiness" but better understood as "flourishing" or "living well and doing well." Eudaimonia is not a feeling. It's not the pleasure of a good meal or the excitement of a party. It's a condition of a whole life — a life lived well, in accordance with virtue, over the full span of a human existence. You can't be eudaimon for an afternoon. You can only be eudaimon over a lifetime. And you might not be the best judge of whether you're achieving it — a life can look successful from the inside while actually being deeply disordered.
The Function Argument
Aristotle argues that everything has a function (ergon) — a characteristic activity that defines what it is. The function of a knife is to cut. A good knife is one that cuts well. The function of an eye is to see. A good eye is one that sees well. What is the function of a human being? Aristotle's answer: rational activity . What distinguishes humans from other animals is our capacity for reason. Therefore, human flourishing consists in exercising reason well — in living a life guided by rational reflection, practical wisdom, and the virtues that make rational activity excellent. The function argument is controversial. Many philosophers object that human beings don't have a "function" in the way that knives and eyes do. Knives were designed for a purpose; humans (arguably) were not. And even if we do have a characteristic activity, it's not obvious that reason is the only candidate — sociality, creativity, play, and spiritual experience are equally "human."
Virtue as a Mean
virtue , for Aristotle, is a character trait that enables its possessor to flourish. It is a disposition — a stable tendency to feel and act in certain ways — that lies between two extremes, both of which are vices. Courage, for example, is the mean between cowardice (too little confidence in the face of danger) and rashness (too much). Generosity is the mean between stinginess and prodigality. Temperance is the mean between insensibility and self- indulgence. Honesty is the mean between secretiveness and tactless oversharing. Friendliness is the mean between hostility and obsequiousness.
The doctrine of the mean doesn't mean the virtue is always exactly in the middle — the right point depends on the situation. A soldier in battle should lean closer to rashness than a civilian in peacetime. A wealthy person can give more generously than a poor person without being prodigal. The mean is relative to the person and the circumstances. Finding it requires practical wisdom. Importantly, virtues are not natural endowments — they're acquired through practice. You become courageous by doing courageous things. You become generous by practising generosity. At first it's effortful and deliberate; over time it becomes habitual and natural. This is why Aristotle compares moral development
to learning a craft: a carpenter becomes skilled by carpenting, a musician by playing music, and a virtuous person by acting virtuously. The implication is that moral education is not primarily about learning rules but about cultivating habits through guided practice.
The Modern Revival
Virtue ethics was largely eclipsed by utilitarianism and Kantianism for two centuries. Its revival began with Elizabeth Anscombe's influential 1958 paper "Modern Moral Philosophy," which argued that both consequentialism and deontology were bankrupt — that the concept of "moral obligation" only makes sense within a divine-command framework, and without God, the Kantian notion of duty is empty. We should go back to Aristotle and ask about character, not rules.
Alasdair MacIntyre developed this further in
After Virtue
(1981), arguing that virtues only make sense within the context of a practice — a socially established cooperative activity with internal standards of excellence. Chess has virtues (patience, strategic thinking). Medicine has virtues (compassion, diligence). Each practice defines what counts as excellent performance, and the virtues are whatever character traits enable that excellence. MacIntyre added that a whole human life should have narrative unity — it should be a coherent story, not a series of disconnected episodes — and that the virtues are what enable that coherence. Phronesis: Practical Wisdom
Phronesis
— practical wisdom — is the master virtue in Aristotle's system. It's the capacity to perceive what the right thing to do is in a particular situation, taking all relevant factors into account. It's not theoretical knowledge (knowing that courage is a virtue) but practical insight (knowing what courage requires in this specific moment). Phronesis involves several skills working together. First, you need to perceive the ethically relevant features of the situation — what's at stake, who's affected, what the constraints are. Second, you need to deliberate about the available options — not just listing them but weighing them against the relevant virtues and the specific circumstances. Third, you need to act — phronesis without action is not wisdom but mere cleverness. The practically wise person doesn't just see what needs to be done; they do it.