Eclectic approach to the categorical imperative and pleasure

Abstract

This work specifically looks at the concept of the categorical imperative as a pivotal principle in Kant’s deontology and Mill’s conception of pleasure. The focus is to examine potential opening for harmonisation. Thus we establish here, that the basic drivers for these principles are the same. This creates an opening for eclecticism even though the two conceptions are embedded in two theories that lie at the extreme opposites of the moral continuum. The motivation is that contemporary complex moral decision-making elicits an eclectic approach in normative assessment of theories to respond to praxeology in deciding on an action that has a moral content.