Immanuel Kantian Ethics

In early fall of 2015, news agencies across the U.S. were publishing stories about a report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency detailing violations of the Clear Air Act by Volkswagen automobiles. It had been discovered by investigative teams that Volkswagen had been cheating emissions control tests with illegal software in their programmable diesel engines. The engines were programmed to lower their nitrogen (NOx) emissions during standard testing when in real-world driving, they actually produced roughly 40 times more NOx than standards allowed by the Clean Air Act. Global regulatory investigations were launched and Volkswagen stock, reputation, and sales plummeted. The cheating was found to have been implemented since 2009 diesel
Kantian ethics can be used to analyze the moral implications of James’ decision without considering the consequences that occurred afterwards. Immanuel Kant’s theory of morality is based off of two virtues: good will and duty. Kant believed that good will is pure when analyzed morally whether or not the intentions of the good will succeeded or failed. To broaden the critique, a person’s good will can also be analyzed alongside a person’s duty to do some hypothetical good. A person who’s goodwill goes beyond what society may expect for example, would be held higher morally than someone who simply performs in accordance with their duty.
Duties can be categorized in two ways: perfect or imperfect. Perfect and imperfect duties are differentiated by one’s moral obligation to fulfill that duty always and completely or only situationally to varying degree. Perfect duties are the ones that must be fulfilled always and completely, imperfect duties the ones that allow variance. For example, Kant considers honesty a perfect duty; one must never tell a lie. Philanthropy is considered an imperfect duty; it is good to give, but an individual can decide the amount, recipient, and timing of the
However, the decision was not so black and white. James was a senior engineer for Volkswagen and had been with the company for 25 years prior to being transferred from Germany to the US to aid in the clean diesel program. In order to analyze this situation using Kantian ethics, James’ duty must be derived. He had duties to Volkswagen as well as to the general public and environment. With James’ help, Volkswagen knew their 2009 diesel automobiles would not meet the NOx standards. Therefore in this situation, he had an imperfect duty to complete a job for his company as well as an imperfect duty to report their wrongdoing. As James did admit to completing the job of aiding Volkswagen cheat the emissions tests, the maxim can be stated as the decision to agree to complete a job for one’s company despite its obvious legal and environmental implications. If this maxim were to become universal law, that is if everyone were to ignore the legality and negative environmental impact of a task given by their employer, would that be bad? In this particular case, James’ decision can be deemed morally permissible. A world where employees always complete tasks given by their company superiors despite some obvious potential for negative fallout would still function rather