Hacking into Harvard: A Kantian Perspective

Kantian ethics championed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant provide a basis for ethical analyzing human actions. From Kantian perspective, for an action to be permissible first, it must be possible to apply the action to all people at free will without a contradiction occurring and secondly, the actions must respect the goals of humanity and not merely using them for one’s personal purposes (Baron, 2018). From this perspective, the actions of the students were not right since they did not meet any criteria that would justify their actions from a Kantian perspective. Firstly, the remorseful response by some students after being found guilty of doing the “hacking” indicate their actions were not applicable to all people at free will as they themselves were showing regrets for the actions. This makes their actions wrong from Kantian perspective. Secondly, the actions by the students were purely aimed at self satisfaction of knowing beforehand whether they had been admitted or not admitted to the various universities. This further makes their actions to be ethically unacceptable based on the tenets of Kantian perspective. 

The actions by the students were not permissible according to the standard of universal acceptability. This is so because the decision of the students to use the electronically availed means to access data is ordinarily confidential cannot be defended and rationalized with all groups involved. From the case scenario, the various points of view to the situation are evident with some parties arguing the students actions can be justified as they used their legitimately provided passwords to access their own information only and not that of other students. Moreover, some groups have laid blame on the service provider as not taking appropriate measures to mitigate against interferences such as the action from the students. However, the students breached the ethical principle of integrity, which is a basic principle of ethics (O’Neill, 2013). As such the actions of the applicants are not permissible according to the standard of universal acceptability. 

Reference 

Baron, M. W. (2018). Kantian ethics almost without apology . Cornell University Press. 

O'Neill, O. (2013). Acting on principle: An essay on Kantian ethics . Cambridge University Press.