Assignment 02
SUS1501 – Sustainability and Greed
Student Number:
Date:
Teaching Assistant Name:
Declaration:
By submitting this assignment, I implicitly declare that this is my own work.
I am aware that if ANY unacknowledged copying is detected in ANY part of this assignment, I
will get 0 (zero) for the entire assignment.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Fill in your assignment contributions in the boxes where you see “<Answer in here>”.
DO NOT DELETE THE TEMPLATE CONTENT TO REDUCE YOUR TURNITIN SCORE;
Save the file as a Word document with a short name (myUnisa will reject files with long
names);
Submit this file into the Assessment 2 assignment space on myUnisa;
Take a screen grab of the final submission acknowledgement on myUnisa and save this
somewhere safe in case of any disputes:
Check under the Assignments tool that there is a date in the “Processed” cell for the
SUS1501 Assignment 5.
NB – DO NOT RESUMBIT AN ASSIGNMENT AFTER THE DEADLINE HAS PASSED EVEN IF
THE SYSTEM ALLOWS YOU TO DO SO. THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR SUBMISSION DATE
AND YOUR SUBMISSION WILL REFLECT AS LATE
623675
, 1. BACKGROUND FACTS
In assignment 1, one of the questions was:
“In the first 6 months of 2024, the six wealthiest men in South Africa gained on average R77
million per day each.” My personal opinion on this statement is most closely described by:
a. Good for them – they worked hard to earn this.
b. The only problem I have with this is that it wasn’t me earning R77 million a day.
c. No problem with this. I'm sure all of these billionaires donate huge amounts to charities
d. I think that it is morally wrong for anyone to earn that much money.
e. I think that active steps should be taken to correct such immoral earnings.”
Do you remember which option you chose?
In this assignment we are going to zoom in on option “a” specifically: “Good for them – they
worked hard to earn this”. What this option is basically saying is, that the earnings of these
billionaires are completely reasonable and justifiable?
What we want you to do in this assignment is to examine this option (i.e. someone, perhaps
even you, taking R 77 million a day for 6 months) from the perspective of Kant’s formula of
universal law version of the categorical imperative.
2. EVALUATE USING KANT'S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE (We've done the first two stages for
you)
1. State your proposed act as a maxim:
"The richest South African men will take R 77 million (A) every day for six months (C) in
order to get really, really rich (E)."
2. Restate this maxim as a universal law:
"All people (8.1 billion of them) will take R77 million every day for six months in order
to get really, really rich."
3. Is the maxim above conceivable in a world ruled by the universal law;
This maxim could never fit into a world run by a general law. Consider a world
where every person goes to collect R77 million every day for six months with the
sole purpose of becoming “really, really rich”. There would be a need to universalize
this maxims, which leads to a number of irreconcilable contradictions. For one, if
every human indulged in those forms of extreme wealth accumulation, the
economy would get destroyed through hyper inflation, the randomly reorganized
SUS1501 – Sustainability and Greed
Student Number:
Date:
Teaching Assistant Name:
Declaration:
By submitting this assignment, I implicitly declare that this is my own work.
I am aware that if ANY unacknowledged copying is detected in ANY part of this assignment, I
will get 0 (zero) for the entire assignment.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Fill in your assignment contributions in the boxes where you see “<Answer in here>”.
DO NOT DELETE THE TEMPLATE CONTENT TO REDUCE YOUR TURNITIN SCORE;
Save the file as a Word document with a short name (myUnisa will reject files with long
names);
Submit this file into the Assessment 2 assignment space on myUnisa;
Take a screen grab of the final submission acknowledgement on myUnisa and save this
somewhere safe in case of any disputes:
Check under the Assignments tool that there is a date in the “Processed” cell for the
SUS1501 Assignment 5.
NB – DO NOT RESUMBIT AN ASSIGNMENT AFTER THE DEADLINE HAS PASSED EVEN IF
THE SYSTEM ALLOWS YOU TO DO SO. THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR SUBMISSION DATE
AND YOUR SUBMISSION WILL REFLECT AS LATE
623675
, 1. BACKGROUND FACTS
In assignment 1, one of the questions was:
“In the first 6 months of 2024, the six wealthiest men in South Africa gained on average R77
million per day each.” My personal opinion on this statement is most closely described by:
a. Good for them – they worked hard to earn this.
b. The only problem I have with this is that it wasn’t me earning R77 million a day.
c. No problem with this. I'm sure all of these billionaires donate huge amounts to charities
d. I think that it is morally wrong for anyone to earn that much money.
e. I think that active steps should be taken to correct such immoral earnings.”
Do you remember which option you chose?
In this assignment we are going to zoom in on option “a” specifically: “Good for them – they
worked hard to earn this”. What this option is basically saying is, that the earnings of these
billionaires are completely reasonable and justifiable?
What we want you to do in this assignment is to examine this option (i.e. someone, perhaps
even you, taking R 77 million a day for 6 months) from the perspective of Kant’s formula of
universal law version of the categorical imperative.
2. EVALUATE USING KANT'S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE (We've done the first two stages for
you)
1. State your proposed act as a maxim:
"The richest South African men will take R 77 million (A) every day for six months (C) in
order to get really, really rich (E)."
2. Restate this maxim as a universal law:
"All people (8.1 billion of them) will take R77 million every day for six months in order
to get really, really rich."
3. Is the maxim above conceivable in a world ruled by the universal law;
This maxim could never fit into a world run by a general law. Consider a world
where every person goes to collect R77 million every day for six months with the
sole purpose of becoming “really, really rich”. There would be a need to universalize
this maxims, which leads to a number of irreconcilable contradictions. For one, if
every human indulged in those forms of extreme wealth accumulation, the
economy would get destroyed through hyper inflation, the randomly reorganized
