Mill Vs Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher during the 18th century who attacked topics such as morality and justice. He developed his ideas about morality separated against one’s beliefs, mostly due to religion having different variables in which one turns to when looking for an answer. He stated that one should follow categorical imperatives due to the fact that they are rules that everyone must abide by, regardless of what we, as individuals, desire.
One’s autonomy is the most important factor about life, meaning that you should not manipulate others to get what you, personally, want. “Always treat an individual as an end-in-itself, never as a means to an end,” this was the mentality for Kant, in which he believes the key factor towards everyone

Let’s take the drug usage, for example, Kant would be for pro use of drugs since he believes that we have our own freedom and no one should or can tell us what we can and cannot do because it would be a form of manipulation and exploitation to do so. Although Mill will counter argue by stating that if we allow people to make all the decisions they want, will we really bring more positivity to the world? Or will it end in disaster? Taking the example of the drug users, if we as a nation allow people to drink, and smoke, and take whatever substances they would like, we would just allow them to destroy their body and sanity causing a long-term

An issue is either “indirect harm” or “direct harm” to another person. For instance, the factor of utilizing drugs, if we see someone smoking an illegal substance would bother some law-abiding citizen, but it does not harm them in a physical manner to them, though the actions of the other person are still very much illegal. In this case, the person seeing the smoker smoke illegal substances can be ignored by just turning the other way. Although there are several cases where an issue can be a direct harm to others, such as if the drug consumed made the user lose control and take actions they are not able to control and without being conscious, they murder someone. This is where the separation begins since there is a distinguished border is created between the topic of drug