Comparing Mill And Kant's First Principles

Mill & Kant: First Principles
During this semester’s readings, two authors by the names of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant were introduced as important pieces to the philosophical study. Within both of their teachings, they both introduced readers to the idea of first principles. A first principle is a style of teaching and learning the best way to structure your life so that you can turn out as best as you have the ability to. Kant’s first principle was the categorical imperative which was essentially a moral obligation that happened to be unconditional and absolute for all agents or beings. This first principle is also not dependent on a person’s inclination or purpose. On the other hand, Mill’s first principle was his take on the greatest
By this he means that the traditional theories, such as virtue theory which bases a person’s morality on good character traits and consequentialist theories which base moral actions on consequences of actions, are inferior to that of his theory, the categorical imperative. According to Kant, all specific moral requirements are justified by this principle. This essentially means that all immoral actions are irrational because they go against the categorical imperative. Although Kant agreed with many of the philosophers before him, he still argued that conformity to the categorical imperative can be shown to rational activity. This particular argument was based on his theory that a rational will must be regarded as free, meaning that we are the authors of the law that binds it. The categorical imperative is none other than the law of free will. Even though Kant had formulated this into his own theory that was his, just like every theory, it was
Kant would understand and agree with the fact that there are some instances or subjects in which they would have bad effects on society but he would go on to say that the harmful effects do not make our actions immoral. The issue would be that there is already something essentially wrong with the action being done as it is because of the conflict with rational ideals of moral duty. Kant would refute Mill’s main tendency to relate morality with consequences and pursue the route of universalization in a new light than that of the historically