Nowadays, is very common to see those brutal videos on the internet in which people are mistering kids or animals. For sure you have wonder what those kind of people think. Is it morally acceptable to treat that way a person or an animal? Maybe at some point you wonder if animal have rights. In this paper we would seek to answer those question by exploring two ideologies of moral community. In this philosophy paper, we will discuss, compare and contrast utilitarianism’s and Kant’s respective theories on what characteristics make one a member of the moral community.
First of all, in order to compare and contrast Utilitarianism’s and Kant’s ideology regardless of what make one a member of the moral community we must know some background …show more content…
Likewise, by not having the capacity of suffering make inanimate objects unimportant, since we grant such importance. Utilitarians agreed that species membership is morally irrelevant. (2014 The Fundaments of Ethics, p.131) In other word, this means that moral community do not requires to be part of a specific specie in order to be part of it. Some utilitarian have developed an important and controversial argument called The Argument from Marginal Cases. This argument establishes that it is immoral to kill, harm and eat marginal human beings. Since, for utilitarian’s marginal human beings and animals have equal importance, we must treat them equally. (2014 The Fundaments of Ethics, p.132) In other words, we must not do any action against animals that we would not do to a marginal human being. On the other hand, we have Kant’s ideology. Indeed, Kant thought that rationality and autonomy is what make one member of the moral sphere. It is important to keep in mind that for Kant rationality and autonomy support the dignity of a human being. Being rational literally means being able to use our reason to guide us on our achievement of goals in a moral way. (2014 The Fundaments of Ethics, p.175) Being autonomous is have the capacity to take …show more content…
Indeed, both ideologies differ in who is part of the moral community and how they gain the moral status. First of all, Kant’s view establishes that in order to someone forms part of a moral community have to be autonomous and rational. Kant’s theory excludes infants, animals, sever mentally ill and mentally retarded. In the other hand, utilitarians use as a guideline the slogan of Jeremy Bentham. They think that if a being is capable to suffer, they gain the entry to the moral community. In this view animals and human being (included marginal human being) have the equal right to be part of the moral sphere. It is not new that this two ideologies differ one of another. We must take in account that Kant disagree with other important consequentialist claims. To conclude, this paper had the purpose of discuss, compare and contrast utilitarianism’s and Kant’s respective theories. Such theories consist on the characteristics one must have in order to be a member of the moral community. We conclude that for Kant’s view one must have autonomy and be rational. Also, we study the utilitarianism view in which one is member of the moral sphere if is capable to