Topic: are reasoning and emotion equally necessary in making moral decisions.

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Topic: are reasoning and emotion equally necessary in making moral decisions.

Mentor group: Mr P Cairns

Handed in date: 11th February 2008

Word count: 1378

Whether reason or emotion is equally necessary in justifying moral decisions is a highly controversial topic. I am going to analyse and evaluate two important approaches from Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham. I will partially focus on these two important figures, as one presents good will as the only thing that is capable of producing morally justified decisions, if that will conforms to practical reasoning. The other one states that a moral decision is a decision that increases the "Greatest Pleasure for the Greatest Number of People" thereby focusing on the importance of an emotional state of happiness for making morally justified decisions. In order to come to a conclusion of whether Kant's or Bentham's idea of reason and emotion in moral decisions are justified, I will focus on the building blocks on which their theories are built. The origin of their theories is nature itself, I will analyse certain characteristics of nature, indicating whether Kant's theory supports the significance of reasoning or Bentham's theory supporting the importance of emotions is completely