Kant's Deontological Theory Of Morality

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” was a quote by the philosopher Immanuel Kant who developed what is known as deontological ethics followed by his famous categorical imperatives. Kant embraced the idea that all human beings have equal worth and therefore it is important to protect and promote each person's freedom. He was in favor of laying down obligations because he believed that citizenship should be a task, a responsibility to contribute to those moral condition. Therefore, it was his goal to inform people that morality is a duty and duty alone. Morality should be independent and not affected by any other factor. For this reason, the strength behind
Kant's theory is that it allow an individual to evaluate their behavior more carefully , however, the weakness behind Kant's theory is that it doesn't account for tragic outcomes that can result when following the particular duty.
To start off, Kant's moral theory is deontological because it emphasize the concept of duty. According to Kant, the right actions should only develop from pure motives and from a sense of duty. In other words, that action should conform to moral laws and done from motivation of good will. Good will is what Kant defined as a one's intention to follow the moral law to ensure that all actions arise from the only purpose of doing what is right. Any motivations that influence the action would make that action morally worthless. In addition, the basis of deontological view is that an action cannot be considered right because of the positive consequences that follows, but rather the action itself has to be correct in itself. For example, if your neighbor's house was on fire and you decided to go in to rescue, your only intention should be to save the people inside and no other reasons beyond that. The action you choose to perform should be universal that everyone should be made to follow that action because it is a universal norm. The nature of morality is to do one’s duty even when we are not inclined to do it, and not
because we are afraid of the negative consequences, or because we expect positive or beneficial outcome. In relations to the example provided above, if you had prior expectations of being acknowledged as a hero for your actions, then your actions automatically becomes meaningless. Kant believed that when reasoning with morality, one should also follow that along with good will which was to act out of a sense of moral obligation or "duty". when doing the right thing or acting morally, we should focus on our actions rather than desirable consequences. Furthermore, in order to test out whether or not the actions follows the moral law, Kant came up with two sets of categorical imperatives. The first formulation states that to “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law”(131) which is to act on any principle that everyone else could pursue as well. This formulation can be applied into context of making false promises. If everyone in the society were to make false promises when borrowing money, with no intentions of paying the money back and if everyone in the society were to live by that principle of false promises, trust would not exist in the world. The second formulation was to “act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.”(128-9) It indicates that it is important to treat others and yourself as ends in themselves and never as means to an end. The second formulation can be applied to stealing because when you steal, you are violating someone ends by choosing their property to your own ends. Moreover, Kant's moral theory has both strengths and weaknesses.
The strength of the moral theory is that it allows one to self evaluate their behaviors and their true intentions before carrying out their actions. Most of the time, we are not aware of the unconscious intentions that is hidden underneath our actions. With Kant's moral theory, we can carefully analyze whether our actions are dedicated wholeheartedly for the good of others. The weakness within Kant's moral theory is that duties are not ranked in order of most to least important. This can result in immoral dilemmas as well as tragic outcomes when obeying the particular duty. As an example, we can refer back to a eerie and remorseful times during the Holocaust. If you were in the shoes of a family who was hiding a Jewish family in their home to protect their lives, and a German soldiers arrived all of the sudden to question, you are faced with a dilemma between obeying your duty by telling the truth or to tell a lie in order to protect the Jewish family. Therefore, the duty of telling the truth would result in an unjust consequence and it proves that no set of rules can control the different possibilities and events that occurs throughout
life. All in all, Kant's moral theory is effective in its way of informing people that our desires often leads us to deceive ourselves about our own motives and we start to gear towards what morality demands of us instead of being in control of our own morality. Morality should be independent and not affected by any other factors. We are sometimes unaware of our intentions that are stored in the unconscious part of our mind and sometimes we are capable of rationalization but our egoistic thinking overwhelms us. Overall, it is a powerful message and also a powerful theory that allow us to analyze deeply about the actions we encounter on a daily basis.