My General Principle of Ethics

I have always had ethical problems with Immanuel Kant and strict duty-based ethics. I don’t think a strict duty-based ethics is immoral, just not human. Mr. Kant believes that you should always act in accordance with duty. Your most important duty is based on a ranking system of obligations within the categorical imperative. Although, Kantian deontology allows for a duty to be happy and towards self-improvement, these are not ranked highly in the obligation chain. More importantly these are seen as valuable only as they contribute towards your duty.

Always doing your duty is a repulsive concept. As a human we have passions, make mistakes, make jokes, do the wrong thing, and have fun. We do these things not because they are valuable in contributing to something else, but because we value them as part of the human experience, in themselves. The sterility of life being lived only according to duty is inhuman. Being constrained to not generally pursue happiness, but instead having to follow a list of duties, is inhuman. We should get to value happiness as a worthy pursuit in itself.

Kant justifies his ethics of duty in the concept of self-dignity. We do these duties because we have respect for ourselves. I agree with Kant that dignity is an important concept and should be highly valued. We should certainly value the concept of obligation that contributes to dignity. Since we value dignity so highly, in many situations an obligation should overrule our hedonistic tendencies to pursue happiness. But dignity is not our only value. Even if you assume it were the cardinal value, it is precisely because of this self-dignity that we can not always follow duty. Always following duty is not treating yourself with respect. In certain situations there are other worthy ends that should be pursued at the expense of duty.

The best way to look at ethics in my opinion is to avoid making broad principles. Instead one should look at the details of individual situations and evaluate based on our previous experiences. In each individual decision one should evaluate which value or values are of the most importance. In some situations it will be obligation. In other situations it will be happiness, or whatever other values or sub-values is deemed to be most important. Some small detail could change what is most important. Also certain values playing together could over rule a value that would be seen as greater than either part. I would identify this ethic as a situational prima facie value based ethic.

To avoid all the technical jargon, we should make ethical decisions based on our experiences, not on broad principles. We should look at individual cases, look at our past experience, and render judgment based on what values are most important in this particular situation. That seems like the most human way to approach ethics, especially since it allows for improvement and growth of morality.