With use of an example from applied ethics, analyse and evaluate the role of reason in coming to ethical judgement.

To help me analyse this point, I will produce an example of a person who does not possesses natural intelligence. A good example, which I came by recently was a character called Lennie, from Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’. Lennie is not intelligent, extremely strong and very childish. At one point in the book Lennie is let to stroke a girl’s hair. Suddenly the girl, who let him do it, starts screaming because Lennie started to stroke her hair too hard. Lennie panics and accidently kills the girl. While the action is clearly immoral, Lennie had only best intentions, a ‘good will’ if we can say so. Yet his maxims let him to commit a murder. And even though this action (stroking hair) does pass through Kant’s scheme of identifying a ‘genuinly moral principle’ – it is nice to stroke someone’s hair, with having best intentions and willing everyone to do so. But when Lennie acts according to it, he commits a murder. The whole concept of stroking hair being a moral principle is already ridiculous, plus the fact that it somehow led to a murder - threatens Kant’s theory.

The Greek Virtue Ethics theory would, however, argue that Lennie is not a moral person to begin with. Greeks would argue that his will to stroke girl’s hair more and more was caused by the desiring part of his soul being dominant, and with reasoning part lacking presence, he’d be left without any self control. This theory easily identifies that, no matter what kind of intentions Lennie had, he still failed to be moral, as he lacks the ability to reason and to control his desires.

However, Virtue Ethics argues only for the role of reason, which is different for everyone, while moral standards should be same for everyone. If one does not possess ability to reason, he can still be moral, if someone, like his friends or relatives would help him. Kant’s theory prohibits that kind of interference; as to judge what is moral, one has to possess intelligence. So if we stick to Kant’s theory, we would conclude that, one has to be naturally intelligent to be moral.

Overall both theories produce a viable account on the fact that Lennie’s actions are immoral, however Kant’s theory made me believe that something like stroking hair can be a genuinely moral principle, and if then it leads to a murder, would it then be a moral thing to do? This shows a flaw in Kant’s theory. Virtue Ethics produces a plausible account, that Lennie’s actions weren’t moral to start with, and the absence of reason only led to consequences being even worse, however it does not leave any possibility to someone lacking reason to be moral, without any outside interference.