What is the moral principle of consequentialist? And what is the moral principle of categorical? Both the principle’s moral are in our life. We can see in our decision to do something and to choose two or more situation. In certain situation, sometimes we have to face the difficult situation and like or not we have to take one choice and receive the risk. Definitely, we have many consideration to take the best decision.

Consequentialist is moral principle that locates morality in the consequences of an act. In state our life that will consider result from the thing you do. The most influential of consequentialist moral reasoning is ulilitarianism, a doctrine invented by Jeremy Bentham. He gave first clear systematic expression to the utilitarianism moral theory. Bentham’s idea, his essential idea is a very simple one with a lot of morally intuitive appeal. Bentham’s idea is the following the right thing to do, the just thing to do. It’s to maximize utility. What did he mean by utility? He meant by utility is the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering.

How to arrive at the principle of maximizing utility? He started by observing that all of us. All human being are governed by two sovereign masters, namely pain and pleasure. We human being like pleasure and dislike pain. And we should base morality whether we are thinking of what to do in our own lives or whether as legislators or citizens we are thinking about what the law should be. The right thing to do individually or collectively is to maximize, act in a way that maximizes the overall level of happiness. Bentham’s utilitarianism is sometimes summed up with the slogan “the greatest good for the greatest number”.

The second moral principle is Categorical. Categorical is moral principle that locates morality in duties and rights regardless of the consequences. The most influential of categorical moral reasoning is Immanuel Kant. In this moral principle, we notice the intrinsic quality or character of the act matters morally

We can look at those two different modes of moral reasoning. We notice sometimes, we were tempted to locate the morality of an act in the consequences in the result, but we also notice that In some cases we weren’t swayed by result. The main question about that moral reasoning is “what’s the right thing to do ?” and that is returned to ourselves.

It was quoted from Michael Sandel, Harvard University.

Rusfian Effendi, mahasiswa Aqidah dan Filsafat Islam 2015, UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta