ethics

Utilitarianism as an ethical philosophy revolves around the idea that the moral worth of any action can be determined only by the contribution that it makes to the maximization of satisfaction among all entities involved (Lyons , 1965 . This means that whenever a person commits an action , the utilitarian way of judging that action as either good or bad is considering the consequences that the action has made towards all of the persons involved , deciding whether the action has led to the happiness or sadness of persons involved , measuring the gravity of such

consequences , and summing all positive and negative outcomes together to arrive at whether the act has either produced an overall positive consequence or an overall negative one . A good phrase that can describe utilitarianism would thus be "the greatest good for the greatest number (Lyons , 1965 ,

.5 . Thus when an assassin kills a dictator in cold blood in to free millions of unhappy citizens , the act can be seen as morally good in the utilitarian perspective despite the anguish that the dictator 's family and friends would feel over his murder simply because the citizens who were freed greatly outnumber them . On the other hand if the dictator was a good leader with a majority of followers and the assassin was hired by only a small group of antagonists who wanted to seize power themselves , then the act would be considered as morally bad because the people who would be anguished by the dictator 's death greatly outnumber those who would rejoice in it . This simplifies ethics as a numbers game , where the goodness of action is judged by the number of people satisfied by it in relation to the involved . Kantianism believes actions performed should be in accordance with an underlying principles which can be applied universally (Rawls 2000 . The moral value of an action is thus measured by how universal that action is . There is a strong rational influence in Kantian ethics and so actions are judged depending on how reasonable they are when placed in a universal context . Using the same example , Kantianism would not focus on the consequences made by the assassin 's murder of the dictator . Instead , Kantian ethics would deal with whether the act of killing someone who oppresses others is a universally acceptable action Hence , other similar settings would be examined and if all of those other settings seem to point out that those who oppress should be murdered , then the act is considered to have good moral value . On the other hand , if the analysis reveals that there are many instances when the action cannot be applied or is contradictory to itself , them the action is considered to have bad moral value

Therefore it is clear that the main difference between these two ethical ideologies is their focus towards what makes an action morally good or bad . While utilitarianism focuses on consequence , Kantianism focuses on applicability . This difference in focus does not make the two points of view...