Utilitarianism, Kant's Moral Theory, And Virtue Ethics

In Intro to Ethics, we have discussed each moral theory in the context of how the theories dealt with the theory of right conduct and with the deontic status the action had. When we looked at how each theory we talked about dealt with deontic status, we looked at how the actions were right or wrong. The main theories we looked at this semester that dealt with right conduct were utilitarianism, Kant’s moral theory, and virtue ethics. Although each of these moral theories has its own flaws, I believe that Kant’s moral theory is the strongest and most superior out of all the moral theories.
The first moral theory studied in the course this semester was classical utilitarianism. Utilitarianism at its base argument is the attempt to maximize utility. When a person uses the moral theory of utilitarianism, they are looking at that action that benefits the most people or that has the higher good for the most people. Utilitarianism say that a person does a certain action that helps or benefits a higher number of people then that action is moral good. Before discussing Utilitarianism further, there is a need to explain what it has to do with consequentialism. Consequentialism is when a person looks at actions or something that someone does and judges that action based of the criteria that of consequences that action brings. To a consequentialist the only way for an action to be moral good the action itself and what the outcome it brings must be good. Let’s say that person is talking a final on Tuesday and decides to bring a bag of candy to the whole class during their final to have something to keep them up. If this action was to benefit the whole class and that action brings good consequence than that action is morally right to a consequ...

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... to apply this to everyone. Since there is no one way of knowing what makes a person virtuous it cannot be applied to everyone in a group. An example of this is when a person is asked what Jesus would do. We all assume that Jesus was a virtuous man and that he always did the right thing. Some people try to use this as a guide to rather or not they are a virtuous person. But since we were not their when Jesus was alive we don’t know what exactly he did. Since there is no one definition on what makes something morally right or wrong then this cannot be used on everyone.
Kant’s morally theory is the most superior because it universally applies its self to everyone. Kant has multiple moral maxims that can be applied to any given situation on any given day. If a person ever need to know what they were doing was morally right or wrong they and look at this moral theory.