Someone can still do something that is their duty, but that doesn't mean that what they do isn't immoral. A simple example would be if a person owed money: in Kantian morality, if a person paid back the money simply because they owed it and they felt it was their moral obligation to do so, this would be moral; however, if a person paid back money only because they thought that it would help them out if they ever needed to borrow money again, this would be immoral.
Kantian morality -- or the ethical system that we call "deontological" (Bluhm & Heineman 2007, p. 26) -- has to do with whether or not "its rules do not allow us to specify what is good independently from what is right. Deontology holds that some acts are inherently right or wrong, quite apart from their consequences" (2007, p. 26). This means that telling the truth is a principle that has to be observed whatever its consequences are.
In prudent pragmatism, a person must develop virtues -- especially the virtue of moderation, "that is, acting according to the mean" (Bluhm & Heineman 2007, p. 28). This means that people must always have a certain feel for what could come -- the "varying circumstances" (2007, p. 28), so to speak. Chapter three states that it is not by knowing all these rules that people become good people, but it is by knowing what rules apply to certain situations.
The good physician is not one who knows abstractly that white meats are healthful but does not know what...
He is rather the one who knows from his experience that chicken [a white meat] is good for the patient and prescribes it, even though he may not know the general rule about white meats (Aristotle 1941, p. 1029; Heineman & Bluhm 2007, p. 28).
This is to say that we don't have to know what the problem (ethical problems) are, but it has to do, rather, with finding out when to apply the ethics to the certain situation that we find ourselves in. That is, we don't have to know that lying is wrong, but we do have to understand what constitutes a lie (Bluhm & Heineman 2007, p. 29).
Ethics does not have to do with feelings, religion, or societal rules that we feel we have to adhere to. In American society, I feel that individuals feel they need to adhere to religion and adopt other societal norms in order to feel that they have a moral compass; but many of these institutions that we adhere to are bogus and there is the need to take a step back to pragmatism.
Bibliography
Bardach, Eugene. (2008). A practical guide for policy analysis: the eightfold path to more effective problem solving. CQ Press; 3rd edition.
Bluhm, William. & Heinemann, Robert A. (2007). Ethics and public policy: method and cases. Longman.
Fischer, Frank. & Miller, Gerald J. (2006). Handbook of public policy analysis: theory, politics and methods. CRC Press; 1st edition.
Moran, Michael., Rein,…
