A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ARISTOTLE’S AND MOORE’S ETHICS IN THE LIGHT OF KANT’S ETHICS WITH IMPLICATIONS IN AFRICAN ETHICS

Abstract

The paper attempts to critically interrogate the ethics of Aristotle and George Edward Moore in the light of the ethics of Immanuel Kant with implications in African ethics. Aristotle holds an ethical view that virtue lies in the middle of two extremes and happiness at the end determines the goodness or badness of any action which has to become constantly displayed by people. Moore holds an intuitionist ethical stand where the good or bad of anything is known through intuition for it cannot be known by empirical observation and judgment. The problems which stand as central features of these ethical positions are that some actions have no median way to virtue, and the possibility of ethical relativity following intuition. But Immanuel Kant’s ethical position would come for reconciliation by advocating that good justified by proper reason should stand as determinant factors for what is morally right or wrong unlike the Aristotle’s and Moore’s positions. By this, Kant proposes for a universal ethical theory that anchors its ethical judgments on rationality and self-recommendation after self-experience. It is from this perspective that the paper points out the implications of Kant’s ethical position in African ethics where the sense of morality is natural and being justified by reason and self-experience. The paper is expected to show how African conception of morality is natural and justified by self-experience and reason which implies in Kant’s ethics. The paper adopts analytic and critical evaluative methods.