For the Final research paper, you have asked us to compare our own views of morality with the ethics of two philosophers. I would like to examine Immanuel Kant and Ayn Rand’s moral systems for my essay. At first glance, you could say that these two thinkers seem diametrically opposed, but they actually share some similar views.
I’ll start by reviewing some of the details of Immanuel Kant’s moral system. You could say that Kant’s views on morality are just an extreme form of altruism. Kant believed in duty ethics, or the act of judging the morality of an action within the context of a system of laws. He believed that humans alone possessed goodwill, a word which he defined as, “the ability to act in accordance with moral laws regardless of interests or consequences”. (Camoin) Kant credits human emotions with the power to know the greater metaphysical world by indiscernible means that he termed “pure reason.” Pure reason exists in the inexplicable human instinct for duty. Duty is an uncompromising obligation that one “just knows.” Kant held that an action is moral only if a person performs it out of a special sense of duty (MacKinnon 45). Morality is therefore derived through feelings from that metaphysical dimension of reality. That being said, these duties fall within Kant’s two moral codes: The first being that they must be logically consistent, not self-contradictory and that any truths must be universal. On the other hand, we have Ayn Rand, whose philosophies I consider to be an expression of extreme egoism. According to Ayn Rand, society should do away with altruism altogether and operate off of Rand’s moral system of Logical Ethical Egoism, which would provide the most freedom and individuality to our society (Camoin). This means that every individual would act out of their own self-interest in order to benefit the whole of society.