1001Philosophers

Aristotle vs Immanuel Kant

Aristotle and Kant are the two most influential figures of normative ethics in the Western tradition, and the contrast between virtue ethics and deontology is largely a contrast between their projects. The recent revival of virtue ethics in Anglophone moral philosophy has often been a self-conscious turn away from the Kantian framework that dominated mid-twentieth-century moral theory.

At a glance

AristotleImmanuel Kant
Dates384 BC – 322 BC1724 – 1804
NationalityGreekGerman
EraAncientModern
Movements Peripatetic School, Ancient Greek Philosophy German Idealism, Enlightenment
Profile Aristotle → Immanuel Kant →

Where they agree

Both held that morality requires the cultivation of rational agency, both held that the moral life is not a matter of following rules mechanically but of judging well in particular cases, and both rejected accounts of morality grounded in mere desire-satisfaction or social convention. Both wrote against moral skepticism and for the autonomous rational agent.

Where they disagree

Aristotle's ethics is teleological and centers on the development of stable character traits — the virtues — that constitute human flourishing (eudaimonia) over a lifetime. Kant's ethics centers on the moral law as it constrains the will of a finite rational agent: the categorical imperative is the criterion of moral action, and the agent's task is to act from duty rather than from inclination. Where Aristotle's good action expresses a well-formed character, Kant's expresses respect for the moral law against inclination. The disagreement runs through their accounts of friendship, emotion, and political community.

Representative quotes

Aristotle

  • “All men by nature desire to know.”

    Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10

  • “Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

    A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

  • “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

    Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Immanuel Kant

  • “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

    Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

  • “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

    Der kategorische Imperativ, der überhaupt nur aussagt, was Verbindlichkeit sei, ist: handle nach einer Maxime, welche zugleich als ein allgemeines Gesetz gelten kann.

  • “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

    Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6. | Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built. | From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. | Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.

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