Immanuel Kant and Utilitarian Ethics

Adopting a view of utilitarian ethics in which motivation in the public interest takes on greater weight than is generally appreciated, this book explores the extent to which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant is consistent with this nuanced version of utilitarianism.

Kant’s requirement that full ethical merit needs an agent to act purely ‘from duty’ to forward ‘the universal end of happiness’ rather than from a personal inclination to achieve that end clearly distinguishes his position from th...