In our daily life, we face with many problems where some of them are ethical. Reading a book even though you should do your homework may seem more interesting. This is an easy example to choose what you will do first. But we have some harder dilemmas. If you see a poor person on the roadside, would you help him/her? This question might have less condition. What would your answer be if we add an information which tells that, the person wants you to buy just food? Some people think that the important part of an incident is reason, while other people think that as result.
Imagine that someone knocks your door. A young man, who seems poor, is looking at you on the door. He is wounded so you help him. Why did you help him? Did you have mercy? Or did you do it just because of it was the true one? According to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), if you helped him because you felt sorry for him, then this behavior is not an ethical one. You must do it because it is a good task. You must not care about your emotions while doing an ethical action. Immanuel Kant says that we have some ethical tasks, which we must obey. Think about this story:
Somone knocks your door, and you open it. Your friend tells you that someone is looking for him to kill and he follows your friend. You invite him to your house and close the door. After five minutes, your door is knocked again. You open it and a man with a knife is standing up. He says that he is looking for a man and he tells you the man who he is looking for, which are same with your friend’s appearance. You say that you saw someone similar who was going to the park which is located back of your house. And the man goes.
Did you do the correct one? Even though it seems a true behavior, you might cause your friend to die! What if your friend escape from the window while you were talking with that man? The man can find him there, which would not be fine. According to Imanuel Kant, you must tell the man that you invited him to your house! Because lying is not a good task.
These examples show that Immanuel Kant was not caring about results, but reasons. Think about a situation where you help someone poor. If you do this because your friend saw this, would it be a good behavior? From poor person’s view, this action provided him to eat nice food, maybe. Thus, it must be a good action. But from your point of view, you didn’t help the poor person make a favour. So, this must not be a good one.
In conclusion, important part of a situation, reason or result, usually depends on some other conditions. In my opinion, intention takes an important role in actions however doing an action with a decent intention which causes bad situations would not be an ethical behavior all the time.