Tag Archives: goodintentions

$500 or $5 million: What is the bigger donation?

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Kant’s perspective that consequences of an action are not what matters, but rather the “moral worth” of the action is important really resonated with me. Kant argues that if a person is doing something because they have the motivation to do good rather than bad, then how the action actually results is irrelevant. The most significant part of the action was the motivation itself and the attempt to try to do good.

When thinking about an action’s moral worth rather than the action’s consequence, I immediately thought about charities. We always see things on the news where large charities that get donated millions of dollars. You think how much good work they can do with all that money. I am part of an organization where we do fundraising so that we can donate to charities around San Diego. At a recent fundraiser, we only raised $300 and a lot of the members felt upset that we wouldn’t be making a big enough impact. However, once I read Kant’s philosophy on this, I felt better that though my organization couldn’t donate millions of dollars, we still were trying to do our little part to help out the community.

Through this, I realized that not everyone can donate huge amount of money to charity, but, if we all look at doing an action with moral worth, it doesn’t matter how much money you are able to donate, whether it is $1 or $1 million. It is the fact that people are trying, help even in the smallest way, to make the world a better place.

Below is an infographic on charitable donations in the US in 2018. As you can see, 70% of charitable donations was by individuals rather than the 5% by corporations.

Titanic saving the world

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As you walk down the street and decide to give a dollar to a homeless woman around the curve, you don’t expect this little amount to be able to buy her a new life, but you still decide to help her because you know that any amount will be better than nothing and will make a small contribution to one of her needs in one way or another. It is not about how big or small the outcome will really be, but rather the intention behind the action.

This ideal is emphasized in Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals as it is stated, “an action from duty has its moral worth not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided on.”

Some of the major issues that our society faces, such as climate change, have many people who contribute towards the manner because they voluntarily want to help and are motivated to help the cause. For example Leonardo Dicaprio has made use of his resources to be involved in and even create his own charity, the Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, in which he seeks after the wellbeing of our planet Earth. Though his team continuously works hard to protect the planet, the repercussions of climate change are too strong to be fully controlled. One could say that there would really be no reason for Dicaprio and everyone else in the world to put an effort into stopping/controlling climate change because at the pace that it’s going, it will not be sufficient. However, Kant would argue that their actions are valued and have moral worth because of the good intentions behind them regardless of the immediate effects.

https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/