Kahn's Motivation for Action - Essay Example

KAHN’S MOTIVATION FOR ACTION Introduction This essay will look into three motivations of actions by khan. The three are: mediate inclination, immediate inclination and duty. This easy will give a detailed explanation of all these three motivations and Kahn’s interpretation. The essay will also look into the question given. This question requires one first to explain the statement that if one is doing the right thing, does it matter if they take a duty action or act from immediate inclination. Then it will answer if the objector of the question is right or not and give reasons. The essay will depict the thesis statement and give a support statement to support it. At the end, the essay will include a conclusion. Explanation of the text Action is doing something meaningful to attain a certain objective. It is often an act. Kahn described these motivations for actions. A motivation is the drive one has to perform a certain act. One of the motivations identified is the mediate inclination. This is an action that is based on fulfilling some other inclination. It has some independent end. For instance, a shopkeeper may decide to reduce the prices of items for the benefit of the customers. However, he is not doing this for the customer’s satisfaction only; he wants to fulfill another inclination. That is of having a thriving business or making more profits from the large number of customers. The immediate inclination on the other hand is when a person acts out of feeling good about the action. This for instance may appear when the person is sympathetic and thus needs to act out of the good the act feels to him. This however, does not fulfill the moral good as depicted by Kahn. The duty is acting out of obligation. An obligation is something that a person knows that they are entitled to doing it. According to khan, this is the best course of action to take in given situation. Explanation of the question The question requires us first to explain the given statement. As long as the action is right, it will not appear to be of trouble if we are acting from the immediate inclination or duty. This statement is contradictory. This is because khan has clearly explained that immediate inclination is acting out of feeling good about a situation. Mostly it is an act of sympathy for instance a person opening an orphanage to help the orphaned kids and feel good about helping them. Duty on the other hand is acting out of the moral obligation (Hill 45). As far as everyone is concerned, a duty is something that every responsible human being cannot avoid. The objector of this statement is not right. This is because according to Kahn, it matters when one is using the immediate inclination or the duty. Irrespective of how right the situation is, acting out of duty is the most important concept. This is because duty does not require one to have another motive behind it. You don’t perform an obligated responsibility because you are necessary looking for something in return. Explanation of the thesis Duty is the most important motivation for action in any given situation. Kahn suggests passing over of all actions recognized divergent to responsibility even though they could be convenient for this or that purpose. This is because with such actions, question cannot arise whether they might have been done from duty since they even conflict with it. This is because actions contrary to duty cannot be done from duty. One cannot take an act of sympathy and claim it is a duty since it’s something the person chooses to duty like the responsibility. He also set aside actions done out of self interest. It is not a duty doing them because they are driven by self interest. It is of less effort to differentiate whether an accomplishment is done from duty or out of self interest. It could be conceivable for it to be much harder to notice this difference when the action is in conformity with duty. This is for the reason that it is hard to determine the person’s actual motivation. A person could be claiming to act of duty but have something to gain at the end of it. For instance, a relative who takes care of his brother’s orphaned children just for the mere reason of benefiting from the inheritance left behind. The relative might be claiming that it is his moral obligation to look after and fed for the kids left behind. What the people on the outside mat not know is the generous inheritance left behind which the relative is looking forward to benefitting big time from it. (Hill 2009) In such instances where we may not see the motive of self interest, we might start thinking that the person is acting out of duty despite the strong inclination seen to the action in question. This claim however, has some intuitive plausibility. It does undeniably appear to be the scenario that we have the tendency to conflate acting from duty and acting from inclination. At the same time, we view them as sharply separate entities from acting from self interest. This is so suggested by doing something from an ulterior motive and doing it from our own sake. Thus acting from duty is more sharply distinguished from acting from self interest than acting from inclination. Kahn notes that a person can be a beneficiary of an act of sympathy and later help others from duty when his feelings of sympathy have been extinguished. He is not contrasting with the moral status of two different people. Neither is he suggesting that inclination must be absent for a person’s beneficent conduct to demonstrate genuine moral worth. Instead, he is contrasting the moral status of the maxims of actions of the same person under different circumstances. This person’s maxim of helping other elicits out of duty as opposed to duty motivates him to help. Kahn’s contention then is not that moral worth requires an agent to act dutifully without the inclination but that a moral worth is exemplified in an agent’s maxim only when duty is the determining ground of her action. Therefore, it is a necessary condition not a sufficient on that when an agent does some particular thing, he is committed to it being morally permissible. What an agent does might be morally permissible but not morally required. Only morally required actions can have moral worth. Actions from duty fulfill the moral worth condition. An agent’s basis for acting can express concern for his action’s moral rightness. It evokes the notion that actions of its kind are morally required. It is central to acknowledge that an accomplishment can be morally permissible but not morally required. Thus an agent’s actions would fail to express the concern for moral rightness. Conclusion It is evident that our actions are motivated in three different ways: duty, mediate inclination and immediate inclination. The most important motivation for action is the duty. This is because the person is acting out of the moral obligation. The mediate inclination is when one acts out a personal satisfaction. The immediate action is when one acts out of sympathy. Nevertheless, it is conceivable for someone to be a beneficiary of immediate inclination and later switch to act out of duty. This is after their sympathetic feelings are over. It is central to acknowledge that an exploit can be morally permissible but not morally right. It is also probable for someone to act out of duty but what people don’t know is the inclination that is driving him to act in a given way. Work cited Hill, Thomas E. The Blackwell guide to Kants ethics. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2009. Read More