Utilitarian s Vs. Deontologists - 1593 Words

Utilitarian’s vs Deontologists On the topic of the conception of right action, deontologists and utilitarian’s had opposing views on what makes an action just. I argue that Bentham’s view of determining right action, that an action is right if it has the tendency to maximize pleasure, is the optimal one because we are not able to determine the motivations of others with absolute certainty. Deontologists believed that good actions are bad without good will, and that motivation only mattered in determining a right action, not the outcome. Oppositely, utilitarian’s believed that only the outcome mattered in determining right action, not the motivations. Immanuel Kant, a deontologist, determined good will as the concept of a will â€Å"good in†¦show more content†¦Kant gives an example for why lying is not a right action. He states that there is a man who needs money even though he knows he will not be able to pay it back, his maxim is â€Å"’I will borrow money and promise to pay it back, though I know that this will never be done’† (Kant 534). Kant explains that this maxim would not work as a universal law because every banker would not believe someone who says they are going to pay money back, therefore would never give out any loads. He goes on to explain how people should treat each other. He argues that it is not acceptable to treat someone as â€Å"a merely as a means but â€Å"at the same time as an ends† (Kant 536). He says that to treat someone as a merely a means is to treat them merely as a machine in ones plan and involving them without their ability to consent. He argued that peopl e needed to be treated as an ends meaning that people needed to be able to enter agreements of their own free will and without manipulation (Kant 537). Kant believed that treating people merely as a means was without good will and therefore could never produce a right action. On the other hand, Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian, argued that the right action was the one that â€Å"tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it† (Bentham 481). Bentham believed that the determination of a right action was the actions ability to generate pleasure to the greatest amount of people and for the longestShow MoreRelatedCapital Punishment : Deontology Vs. Consequentialism1165 Words   |  5 Pages Capital Punishment: Deontology vs. consequentialism Subject: Analyze the deontological and consequentialist arguments on both sides of the issue of capital punishment in Gregg v Georgia. In this paper I will present the moral arguments of deontology and consequentialism used to determine whether or not using the death penalty was in fact constitutional. 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