Is The Difference Between Kant And John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism

Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are two philosophers with opposing views on the morality of an act. Mill’s utilitarianism theory places the focus of right and wrong solely on the outcome of an act rather than on the act itself. He believe that an act is right if the outcome promotes happiness in the majority of others; “it is not the quantity of pleasure, but the quality of happiness that is central to utilitarianism” (Utilitarian Theories). Kant’s theory (Kantian) is concerned with the motive behind committing an act regardless of the outcome. His believes that categorical imperative should be the functioning rule to determining if an action is right. Categorical imperative is the idea that your actions shouldn’t be driven by motives
2). Simply put, the moral worth of an act is determined on the basis of the happiness it produced. The moral course of action should be whatever produces the most happiness in the majority of people. What makes one’s happiness more valuable that another, other than the amount of people it affects? Say for instance, a man who goes to hospital for routine test and there are people there who match the man’s blood type, and require vital organs to survive. If a doctor has the opportunity to kill the man and make his death look natural so that his organs can be donated to those in need, is the act right? The death of one man would promote happiness in the majority of people; those who received the man’s organ and their families would be happy because they lived or have more time with their loved ones. Utilitarianism implies that the doctor’s action of killing one man is right because the outcome brought happiness to the majority. The act of killing another is morally wrong regardless if it brought happiness to others because it violated that person’s right to life. Just because an action will make someone happy doesn’t make it the right act. If harm is to come to a certain person in order to make others happy, it doesn’t make it the right
It was intended to provide a way for human beings to evaluate moral actions and to make moral judgments. If the doctor in the previous example used categorical imperative to decide whether or not it was morally right to kill the man for the sake of helping his other patients, he would have given value to the man himself and not what his death would provide, and decided against killing him. The first formulation of categorical imperative states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (Johnson). Meaning that we should behavior in a way that we would expect the rest of mankind to behavior; our actions should not be exempt from universal law. The humanity formulation of categorical imperative states that you are to “act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only” (McCormick). Kantians agree that killing the man in the above example is wrong because it treated him as a mere means to and end even though if it maximizes utility for those families. By treating the man as a means to and end it has undermined the values of visiting a hospital for test or check-ups. If it became morally right to kill healthy people who visit a hospital in order to harvest their