ABSTRACT
The utilitarian position can be made clearer if we look at another example of moral decision-making in difficult situations, one in which the approach is not counter-intuitive – as it frequently is. The Kantians would also morally disapprove of allocating scarce medical resources on the basis of a patient’s social usefulness. Kantians hold that every citizen has a right to a fair share of a country’s resources, so every citizen has an equal right to life-saving medical treatment. Kantians would also argue that the question of what obligations we have to the victims offamine is not as straightforward as the utilitarians suggest. The Kantians believe that we have a complex set of moral relations to others. For the Kantian, acts of charity are morally permissible if they can be carried out without great cost to ourselves and those we have strong contractual relationships with: our family, friends and fellow nationals.
