Ethics

Is the only ethical indicator of degrees of moral correctness or wrongness utilitarianism? For instance, how would Kant or Aristotle argue that robbing two people is MORE immoral than robbing one? What if the robber needed that money to feed his family?

Comments

Utilitarianism, or more generally consequentialism, is one way to register the scalar character of morality, because actions will be more or less right depending on their proximity to the best. But other moral theories might also represent moral assessment as scalar. For instance, consequences will play a role on most plausible moral theories, and so most moral theories will often claim that all else being equal harming more is worse than harming less or that all else being equal helping more is better than helping less. For instance, if we think of the Humanity Formula of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, we might think that of two actions each of which treats others as mere means one is worse because it treats more people as mere means or treats them more flagrantly as mere means. Or, for instance, if we focus on Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean we might conclude that some actions are more vicious or at least less virtuous than others because they are even further from the mean that virtue involves.

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