Murtaza Ibrahimi

Professor Reynolds
PHL 230 (Introduction to Ethics)
Assignment #3
December 10, 2019

Stealing

What is stealing? Stealing is one of the many forms of theft that refers to taking someone

else’s property without the owner’s consent to deprive him or her of having it (“Theft”, 2009).

To reduce the rate of stealing, most of the laws and countries around the world recognize the

action of stealing as a crime and define different punishments for it. However, this raises a moral

question of whether there should be an absolute prohibition against the action of stealing or not.

Based on deontological and virtue ethics, I would argue in this paper that there should be an

absolute prohibition against stealing for the reasons that, first, it is a wrong action to take and,

second, by committing the action of stealing a person deprives himself or herself of living a good
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life.

First, based on the ethical principle of deontology, stealing is the wrong action to take.

According to the ‘Categorical Imperative’ of Kant, a moral action is being taken for itself with

no other purposes; moreover, it is not subject to any condition and is valid in any circumstances

(“Kant and categorical imperative”, April 27, 2012). To illustrate, consider a university student

and the moral action of not cheating. For instance, Ali has a final exam today at the university

and attends the exam with no prior preparation. Though he knows that he will fail the exam, he

does not cheat on the exam as he sees the moral action of not cheating valid and follows it

regardless of the pleasant consequences that it may have. Furthermore, according to one of the

formulations of ‘Categorical Imperative’, one should act based on a maxim that wishes to see it

as a universal law (“Kant and categorical imperative”, April 2017). To clarify, consider two
opposite maxims of telling the trust versus lying. A wise person always and normally wants to

see the maxim of telling the truth as a universal law since it results in formation of society in

which the living of every member would flourish; on the other hand, no wise person never wants

to see the maxim of lying as a universal law as it results in ruination of society’s structure

forever. Applying the theory to the action of stealing, it is an action that none would like to see

everyone following it as a universal law. Because it will result in arising of insecurity, unsafety,

plundering, and chaos in a society where the weakest would be suppressed and by the strongest.

Therefore, the action of stealing contrasts with the ‘Categorical Imperative’ ethical theory of

Immanuel Kant and is a wrong action to take.

Moreover, the action of stealing is against Kant’s ethical theory of ‘Golden Rule’. The

‘Golden Rule’ theory says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” (“as cited in

‘The golden rule revisited’”, 2018). According to the ‘Golden Rule,’ one should always treat
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people the way that he or she would like to be treated by them; however, one should not treat

people the way that he or she would not like to be treated by them. To illustrate, consider two

contrary actions of helping people and bullying the people. In this case, every deontologist would

like to be helped by other people and, therefore, considers the action of helping people as a right

moral action; however, a deontologist never would like to be bullied by others and, thus,

considers the action of bullying people as a wrong action. Applying the theory to the action of

stealing, it is a wrong action as the doer of the action never would like other people to steal his or

her property without any consent. Consequently, from a deontologist point of view, the action of

stealing should be prohibited as it is a wrong action based on the ‘Categorical Imperative’ and

‘Golden Rule’ ethical theories of Kant.

 Further, one deprives himself or herself of living a good life by stealing someone else’s

property. Unlike the deontology and consequentialism principles, virtue ethics is not concerned

with the rightness and wrongness of an action; however, it focuses on living a good life, and

what kind of a person we should be. Aristotle describes the good life as a eudaimon life which

means a life of growing and flourishing and describes living a good life as the telos of a human

to be fulfilled (Athanassoulis, N., 2019). So, according to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the ultimate

goal and aim of every human-which Aristotle mention it as telos, should be trying to live a life of

growing and flourishing regardless of his or her action or the consequences that it may have.

Therefore, a virtuous person would always try to take those actions that can help him or her to

grow and flourish in life; and, in contrast, avoids taking those actions that deprive him or her of

growing and flourishing in life. For instance, a virtuous person in Afghanistan would contribute

to education if he or she has the ability by building up schools and universities for the reason that
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this work fulfills his or her telos if living a good life; however, he or she would never harm

education by taking down the schools and universities as it does not contribute to fulfilling his or

her telos. Applying the theory to the action of stealing, a person would never steal the property of

others like it against the telos of a human which is living a eudaimon life. As a result, there

should be an absolute prohibition against the action of stealing because it deprives a person of his

or her life telos which is living a good life.

At the same time, the mentioned arguments concerning stealing would have some

opponents from consequentialists who define the rightness or wrongness of an action based on its

consequences (Dimmock, M. & Fisher, A., 2017). The consequentialists, therefore, may argue

that there should not be an absolute prohibition against the action of stealing for the reason that it

creates the greatest pleasure and happiness at the end for a person or even people. However, the
argument is against Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ and ‘Golden Rule’, and virtue ethics;

further, the argument of consequentialists cannot be acceptable because if there is no absolute

prohibition against the action of stealing then everyone would be encouraged to prefer stealing

over working hard to attain what they desire without paying any cost. Thus, it will create chaos

in the society and destroy the organized living structure within it.

All in all, I believe that there should be an absolute prohibition against the action of

stealing for the reasons that, first, based on Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ and ‘Golden Rule’

theories, taking the action of stealing is wrong and, second, based on Aristotle virtue ethics, the

action of stealing would deprive a person of fulfilling his or her telos of living a good life.

Although might be some opposing arguments by the consequentialists, none can justify the

wrong action of stealing. Hence, based on the arguments I made in this paper, I would argue that

there should be an absolute prohibition against stealing.

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 References

Athanassoulis, N. (2019), Virtue ethics, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from

https://www.iep.utm.edu/virtue/

Dimmock, M., & Fisher, A. (2017). Ethics for A-Level. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Kant and categorical imperative (April 27, 2012). Philosophy and Philosophers. Retrieved from

https://www.the-philosophy.com/kant-categorical-imperative

Theft (2009). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/theft

The golden rule revisited. (2018). Philosophy Now. Retrieved from

https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/The_Golden_Rule_Revisited

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