Scholars To Scatter

Question 1

Jean-Paul Sartre

Answer 1

Argument:
Duties can clash – Kant’s system fails to handle this.

Example:
A soldier must choose between going to war (duty to country) or staying to care for a sick parent (duty to family).

Problem:
Both duties are universalizable, but the soldier can’t do both. This shows Kant’s theory can’t always guide action—if “ought implies can,” then Kant’s ethics fails when it gives us two impossible duties.

Question 2

Michael Stocker

Answer 2

Argument:
Emotions are essential for moral motivation.

Example:
If someone visits you in hospital only out of duty, it feels cold and inauthentic.

Point:
Kant’s ethics neglects important emotional motivations like love and friendship. Stocker claims this makes Kantian ethics disconnected from how real humans relate to one another morally.

Question 3

Bernard Williams

Answer 3

Argument:
Kant’s ethics is too cold and unnatural.

Key idea:
“One thought too many” – if someone saves a loved one but first stops to calculate moral duty, that’s unnatural.

Point:
Truly moral people often act from love or instinctive virtue, not detached reasoning. Kant’s view demands too much rational calculation and ignores this natural moral impulse.

Question 4

Barbara Herman

Answer 4

Argument:
Kant doesn’t hate emotion—he just doesn’t trust it.

Point:
Emotions may lead us to do the right thing, but only accidentally (“by luck”).

Conclusion:
For Kant, only acting from duty ensures a truly moral action. Herman defends this view by saying reason is more stable and reliable than emotional impulse.

Question 5

Benjamin Constant

Answer 5

Argument:
Sometimes lying is the moral thing to do—consequences matter.

Example:
If a murderer asks where their victim is, Kant says you must tell the truth. Constant argues this is absurd—we should lie to save a life.

Point:
This shows Kant’s rigid, absolutist approach ignores morally obvious consequences, undermining his theory.

Question 6

Peter Singer

Answer 6

Argument:
We should act based on the reasonable expectation of consequences.

Example:
Lying to a murderer to protect someone is justified if you reasonably expect it to save them.

Point:
Kant claims we can’t control outcomes, but Singer says we can anticipate them enough to take responsibility. Consequences should inform moral action.

Question 7

Isaac Newton

Answer 7

Influence on Kant:
Scientific model of reason as universal.

Point:
Newton showed reason could discover universal laws of nature. Kant applied this to ethics—if reason can guide physics, it can also guide morality.

Conclusion:
Kant’s moral laws (categorical imperatives) are meant to work like Newton’s laws—objective, rational, and universally valid.

Question 8

Aristotle

Answer 8

Argument:
Emotions can be morally good if trained through reason.
Concept: Virtue ethics – we develop moral character (like kindness or courage) through habit and rational cultivation.

Point:
Emotion isn’t opposed to reason—it can be shaped by it. E.g. visiting a friend in hospital out of genuine love, not just duty, is morally better.

Challenge to Kant:
Emotions, when rationally cultivated, are essential to moral development—not obstacles.