Aristotle,

Kant and Mill Briefly Compared

E. Weislogel

Kant and Mill agree that happiness is simply pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
Aristotle has a richer notion of happiness, seeing it as the fulfillment of what it
means to be a human person (i.e., a virtuous life).

Kant believes it is the intention with which we act that gives our acts moral worth.
Visiting the aged sick is in some ways morally neutral. It is a good thing in general
because it is a duty to visit the aged sick. So if you visit the aged sick, your act
accords with duty, but if you go with the sole intention of trying to win an
inheritance, your visiting has no moral worth. You didn’t do your duty because it is
your duty.

Happiness has no moral relevance for Kant. One could be happy (i.e., experience
pleasure) without deserving it. One is worthy of one’s happiness only if one acts
with a good will. A good will is only good because it acts in accordance with the
moral law (which can be articulated in the formulas of the categorical imperative). A
good will is not attained if one simply has the desire for some desirable outcome for
oneself or another. Outcomes have no bearing on the moral worth of acts, for Kant.

Mill and Aristotle agree that happiness is morally relevant. Utilitarianism holds that
the good act is the one that aims to maximize happiness (which, for Mill means
pleasure), i.e., aims to attain the greatest (net) good (happiness/pleasure) for the
greatest number. For Mill, then, we could say that intention matters only if the
intention is to maximize happiness – for him, that would be a good intention, the
morally praiseworthy motive for action.

Aristotle defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with the highest
virtue. It would be impossible to separate happiness and worthiness in Aristotle’s
view. The truly happy (supremely fulfilled and actualized) person would be a highly
virtuous person.

Kant would be least relativistic in his view of the good. Philosophers actually
distinguish the good from the right, and for Kant the right (adherence to the moral
law) takes precedence over the good (what brings pleasure and satisfaction). But we
could put it this way: For Kant, the good for us rational beings is the good will (the
intention to do right, to do one’s duty because it is a duty), as that is being what we
most truly are: rational beings.

Aristotle would be more relativistic in a sense. His position is a relative absolutism.
All should develop the moral virtues, but how those virtues manifest themselves in
each person’s life will be different. It is not, however, a subjective determination as
to what counts, for instance, as generosity or bravery. For any person, there is an
objective meaning to each virtue of which even the person himself might be
ignorant.

Mill would be most relativistic, at least in a cultural sense. The greatest good for the
greatest number has to take into account who it is who makes up that “number.”
Different groups might have different notions about the nature of happiness, but
within each culture there is some sense as to which acts promote or detract from
overall happiness. It is never simply “anything goes” for any moral philosopher.

Aristotle and Kant might agree that it is the way an act gets performed that matters.
For Kant, the right way is to act from the right intention (i.e., have a good will). For
Aristotle, the right way is to aim at the mean between extremes of a given behavior,
or as he says in numerous places, not just to do the right thing but to do it at the
right time with the right person in the right manner for the right reasons (which, he
never fails to remind us, is difficult).

Kant is certainly an a priori moralist. The structure of reason determines the
dictates of the moral law and this makes moral experience possible in the first place.
Kant holds that we would never be able to discover the objective moral law
empirically (and there is no sense to the term “subjective moral law” – subjective
law is an oxymoron). He learned this from Hume, who “awakened him from his
dogmatic slumber” about such things.

Mill is something like an a priori moralist in that he holds that ethics, unlike the
natural sciences, moves from principles to particulars. In the natural sciences, first
we notice it raining today and then work to find out why it rains in general (the
principles of rain). In ethics, unless we knew what we wanted or “where we were
headed,” we would never be able to judge a given act to be a particular instance of a
good act or not. He holds that we do have this principle “up front,” because it derives
from the very nature of life itself: the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
Given that principle, we can judge whether acts increase or decrease pleasure and
call them “good” or not.

Aristotle does not appear to be an a priori moralist. He says we have to be brought
up to recognize good acts, good habits, virtues, and that we do not have virtues or
know them by nature (i.e., “up front”). In this view, he is more akin to the empiricist
Hume. “Good,” at least at the beginning, is what people say good is. However, unlike
Hume, Aristotle (that student of Plato), thinks we do have access to truths that
transcend the data of the senses. Therefore, unlike Hume, Aristotle is able to provide
the resources for a critique of the general moral views of a society. Hume, on the
other hand, must hold that whatever the society (in general) holds to be good must
be good (as there is no other way to judge).

In this last sense, Hume is like Mill. Mill says that from the decisions of competent
judges there can be no appeal. That’s as good as we’re ever going to get, and so it is
important to develop as many competent judges as possible (given the fallibility of
even knowledgeable persons). In this sense, both are different from Kant, whose
theory provides the resources for a thorough-going critique of social norms.
Humean moral theory is favored by conservatives and traditionalists (especially
those who are not theists). Kantian moral theory is favored by liberals, radicals, and
even revolutionaries.

Theistic moral theories are a priori, of course, as the moral law is a commandment
of God. There are a variety of theories consistent with theism about how moral
virtues are developed. Theistic moral theories are a two-edged sword. They can be
used by conservatives and traditionalists to suppress dissent, but they can also be
used by radicals and revolutionaries to critique status quo policies (see Liberation
Theology/Ethics).