Kantian Ethics and Christian Ethics
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COMPARISONS
THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Many parallels have been drawn between St. Paul’s and Kant’s conception of freedom:
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UNIVERSALISABILITY
The first formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative says that your actions should:
1. Be universalisable
2. Be willed to be universalised
This is the same as Jesus’ Golden Rule:
“Love your neighbour as yourself”
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
If you can will your action to be universalised, then it would be an action you would wish consider moral in all situations including your own. Thus, it could be argued that the Golden Rule is identical to Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
ENDS IN THEMSELVES
Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative gives humans intrinsic value and promotes equality by saying that humans should not be treated as a means to an end but as ends in themselves. In St. Paul’s first epistle to the Romans he writes on two separate occasions: “one may not do evil that good may come.” This is the same as saying: ‘the end does not justify the means.”
According to biblical ethics:
• We are made in God’s image as the climax of his work
Genesis 1:27
“So God created man in his own image”
• Life is divinely and uniquely ordained from conception
Psalm 139:13
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb”
? From this we can deduce that humans have intrinsic as opposed to instrumental value because they were purposely and uniquely designed in the loving image of their creator and therefore should not be treated as a means to an end but as ends in themselves
CONTRASTS
RULES
Jesus teaches that the person not the rules take presidence. In the Gospels Jesus is often shown curing people in the synagogue on the Sabbath (for example in Matthew 12). This goes against the Jewish Sabbath laws.
When questioned about the authority of the Law regarding the rules of the Sabbath Jesus replied:
“Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man”
This can be applied the Law as a whole; inferring that man is not subordinate to the law, but the law was given to man in order to help us understand the concept of sin and how to live a good life.
Kant on the other hand enforces rigid rules to which no exceptions can be made under his principle of universalisability.
ROMAN CATHOLIC AUTHORITY
Roman Catholics suggest that people need strict guidelines to follow in order to determine the moral action.
Kant however argues that a person can deduce the moral action using reason and intellect alone. Submitting to authority is not fulfilling duty.
A POSTERIORI
The Roman Catholic Church relies on Natural Law for much of its teaching and thus takes an a posteriori approach to Christian Ethics (morality can be discovered through experience) unlike the a priori approach of Kantian Ethics (morality is innate and available to knowledge through reason alone).
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