Your paper should be written in the form of an essay—the question is only divided up in order to clarify the main points you need to discuss in the essay.

1. Kant argues that the supreme principle of morality is the categorical imperative, while Mill argues for the merits of the utilitarian criteria of right and wrong. Focusing on the second formulation of the categorical imperative, the Formula of Humanity (FH):

1. Explain, in your own words, why FH might be thought to be a plausible candidate for the supreme principle of morality (be sure to explain what is meant by ‘supreme principle of morality’).

2. Doing the same for Mill, explain in your own words why the utilitarian criteria of right and wrong might be thought to be a plausible candidate for the supreme principle of morality.

3. Kant offers several examples meant to illustrate how FH helps us understand why certain ways of treating others is morally wrong. Taking either his second example (making a promise you do not intend to keep) or his fourth example (the duty to aid others in need of assistance), explain in your own words how the example illustrates the value of FH for understanding the wrongness of the way of acting the example assumes is intuitively morally wrong.

4. How would Mill analyze the example you have just discussed?

5. Explain which analysis you find more plausible by identifying a respect inwhich one the analyses identifies a consideration you take to be morally important that the other does not. Be sure to offer reasons for taking this consideration to be important.

6. Finally, give an example of your own devising in which you take FH to fail to offer a plausible explanation of the moral wrongness of acting in a certain way. Be sure to explain why you find the analysis FH suggests unsatisfactory. Now, offer a second example of morally wrong conduct whose wrongness you find to be not plausibly explained by the utilitarian criteria of right and wrong. Be sure to explain why you take the utilitarian approach to be unsatisfactory in this case.

7. Having explored the weaknesses of both approaches, offer some reasons why a morally serious but undecided person might find either Mill’s or Kant’s approach to understanding why certain ways of acting are morally wrong to be more compelling than the other.

Citations and examples:

1. The question requires that evidence from the text be cited in defense of your arguments.

2. Cite Kant in the following manner: (G Section #:Paragraph #)

3. Cite Mill (Book #, Paragraph #)