Friday, February 12, 2010

Kant -Fundamental Principles

Much better than Nietzsche.    It really is the motive and the intention that determines morality - not the net effect.

Imagine 2 cars run a red light and each kills an innocent pedestrian. Now consider that one driver was an ambulance driver with a pregnant mother in labour.  If he waits for the light, the life of the mother and her triplet babies lives will all be lost.   The second driver was coming from a domestic fight with his wife and was so enraged that he actually intended to hit the pedestrian.

Nietzche would at best consider the acts morally equal, and at worst would raise up the enraged man as a superman willing and able to take his actions into his own hands and thus rising above the slave morality mentality.