Kantianism Vs Utilitarianism Essay

In our situation, Jane has put Rosa in a bit of a predicament. Should she accept the money and help her family, while also letting Jane continue to help the environmental charity? Should she not? If she does not, should she turn Jane in? To try and help solve this problem, we are going to focus one two branches of ethics, Utilitarianism and Kantianism. I’m going to focus on Bentham’s version of Utilitarianism, as the two lines of thinking seem to differ the most when his version is used. The odd part is, even though the two theories are so different, I believe that they will reach the same conclusion in this situation. The main idea of Kantianism is that we need to respect each other’s autonomy and treat people as ends
in themselves rather than using them just to reach a goal. With this in mind, the decision for Rosa to accept Jane’s offer about taking the embezzled money becomes easy. Rosa should not accept the money while following this path of thinking. Even though taking the money would help Rosa’s family significantly, to do so would be stealing from the owners of the company, no matter how insignificant the sum, thus infringing on their autonomy. The most difficult question here though, is should Rosa turn Jane in? If someone directly asked Rosa if anyone was taking money, she would be required to tell the truth when going off of just Kant’s theory. Kant believes that it would be immoral to lie to a murderer that is asking for the location of your friend so that he can kill them. Kant believes lying will infringe on someone else’s free choice, which is part of someone’s autonomy. However, is Rosa required to tell someone that Jane is embezzling money? I do not believe that she is. Since she is not directly hurting the autonomy of anyone within the company, she has no duty to tell anyone anything unless directly asked (“Kantianism”). The main idea of Bentham’s version of Utilitarianism is that we need to make decisions that will produce the most good for the most people.
Should Rosa follow this way of thinking, she would not take the money. While the money would help her family, there is a risk that the embezzling will be discovered. If that happens, there is nothing stopping Rosa from losing her job, going to jail, and no longer being able to support her family. Even if the risk is small, it is still there. It would lead to a lot of suffering for her and her family, and the reward does not outweigh the suffering that could turn up. So now the next question is should she turn in Jane? The ‘energy corporation that nets billions of dollars annually,’ will not miss the several thousand dollars that Jane is taking, and with the environmental charity depending on the money, the good far outweighs the bad. At this point, even if the embezzling is found out, Jane will take most, if not all, of the punishment, and Rosa will be able to say that she missed the small amount. She may receive some punishment, but not enough to lead to an arrest. Through this course of action, I believe that she will produce the most good, without taking much risk
(“Utilitarianism”). It’s interesting how we tend to see different results when applying these two branches of ethics onto the same situation, yet in this one I believe the same conclusion is met for the both of them. The Kantian is still respecting other people’s autonomy and the Utilitarian is producing the most happiness possible without putting her family or herself at risk.