Ethics and Feasibility

Abstract

The investigation concerning a principle or foundation that can serve as criterion for moral conduct is one of the central topics of the ethics. Such a principle needs to be wide enough for neither being reduced to a determined social and historical group morals, nor an ideal so far from the reality that cannot be humanly feasible. In Aristotle's formulation in his Nicomachean Ethics and in Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, we find two opposite positions concerning the issue: while Aristotle affirms that only what is feasible can constitute an ethical principle, Kant postulates a merely possible foundation, whose value does not depend on the fact that one day it comes to be real. In this paper we discuss the solutions presented by both philosophers and the implied difficulties involved on them. At the same time we will try to demonstrate hiw the concept of feasibility that is marginally present in Aristotle's ethics, is in fact an inescapable condition for the constitution of ethical principles.