Deceit And Larceny Analysis

Assessment Two: Argument Development

Deceit and Larceny, Promise of.

This essay will attempt to determine at which point deceit, larceny, and breaking a promise will be considered morally wrong according to three moral philosophies, with Kantian Deontology providing the clearest answer. The two other philosophies chosen are Utilitarianism and Virtue ethics. To begin with, Kantian Deontology will discuss the nature of ones duty towards always telling the truth as well as how a promise is considered 'good' in accord with duty will be discussed, followed by a disassembly of the grey area between wrong and right that Utilitarianism can bring up when looking into difficult situations. Finally ending with how components of Virtue ethics can effect
Kant's idea of good will, would be determined by how someone dispense with the truth and not necessarily if someone has lied. As such when dealing with deceit an excellent example is given by (Varden 2015) Kant in his short essay 'Supposed right to lie' in which he details a situation where a murderer has knocked on your front door and requested the whereabouts of another whom he plans to kill, now know as 'victim'. The situation demands you tell the truth and reveal the victim to be, or tell a lie and spare the victim's life while possibly risking your own life with both answers. Critics of Kantian moral philosophy often point out that if we have a duty to the truth then we must tell the murderer where the victim to be is, thus creating a conundrum between telling the truth and assisting a murderer. Yet another critic also stated that the (Verden, et al 2015) “duty to tell the truth would, if taken unconditionally and singly, make any society impossible”. Following on from this notion, Kant argued against (Verden, et al 2015) this by claiming that “if you have by a lie prevented someone just now bent on murder from committing the deed, then you are legally accountable for all the consequences that might arise from it. But if you have kept strictly to the truth,
Although it's worth noting that a Utilitarian will continue the same (Habib 2008; Mill 1996) maxim of 'greatest good for the greatest number' when making a promise, yet the issue that immediately springs from this is some promises cannot fulfil this maxim. Take for example a promise made to someone that when they die you will ensure they a buried with their accumulated wealth instead of it been divided into a dozen or more inheritance shares and causing conflict within the family, also in this case the person making the promise will legally be unable to claim a share thus absolving them of any personal conflicts. Now the issue that arises from this is by fulfilling the oath and entombing the money with the deceased to maintain the promise, the family is denied their inheritance even if it could be divided evenly. This counters the notion of greatest happiness. For unless the family agreed with it, there are a dozen people that are immediately denied 'happiness'3 and then there is the extended family who also could have benefited from this. Interestingly it could be argued that by breaching the promise and allowing the family to inherent it would be the Utilitarian thing to do, but the loss of respect for one persons word4 might be the cost that needs to be paid. For the Kantian counter argument please refer to the