The Pros And Cons Of Universal Law

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Recommended: Kant’s formula of universal law

Following Kant’s universal law theory I found to be easier than using persons as ends. I wasn’t often in a position where my actions would require me to use universal law, and for the most part it was for trivial matters. However, I found it quite difficult to stop treating people as ends. I couldn’t do it. I’m always asking my friends to do things for me they otherwise wouldn’t do without a little harassment, not in a peer pressure sort of way, I’m not hazing people, it’s mostly just me asking my friend to rinse out my dishes or other menial tasks.
2. When Hobbes mentions war, he does not mean it in a literal sense of the word. What Hobbes is trying to say is that men, in their natural state of nature, act as if they were participants in …show more content…

Hobbes’ social contract is a figurative contract that individuals abide by when they are born. Now, the individual is not required to abide by the social contract upon entry into the society, but to any reasonable person they would understand the beneficial factors of agreeing to the social contract. It would not be beneficial to an individual to break their social contract due to the punishments that will soon follow. The social contract deters people from breaking their contract because it is within their best interest not to, lest they be living in the world described by Hobbes before society was formed. Furthermore no one will ever trust an individual who has been known to break their …show more content…

In Gelernter’s essay he explains that he is not wholly against the idea of capital punishment, but is weary of the self-doubt that occurs during the persecution of a criminal on trial for murder. To convict someone of murder the jury must be undoubtedly positive that the crime committed was done at the hands of the criminal on trial, if a mistake were to be made then the wrong man is being sentenced to death, and irreversible punishment, for something he did not do. Gelernter doesn’t believes that the death penalty is a sort of necessary evil only to be used in cases of complete certainty, because without some sort of punishment system murder would not be considered an absolute evil. He also believes that capital punishment is not always necessary, but in America, where self-doubt looms over us at every waking moment, it is something we cannot live

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