Kant and Mill agree that happiness is simply pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Aristotle has a richer notion of happiness, seeing it as the fulfillment of what it means to be a human person (i.e., a virtuous life).
Kant believes it is the intention with which we act that gives our acts moral worth. Visiting the aged sick is in some ways morally neutral. It is a good thing in general because it is a duty to visit the aged sick. So if you visit the aged sick, your act accords with duty, but if you go with the sole intention of trying to win an inheritance, your visiting has no moral worth. You didn’t do your duty because it is your duty.
Happiness has no moral relevance for Kant. One could be happy (i.e., experience pleasure) without deserving it. One is worthy of one’s happiness only if one acts with a good will. A good will is only good because it acts in accordance with the moral law (which can be articulated in the formulas of the categorical imperative). A good will is not attained if one simply has the desire for some desirable outcome for oneself or another. Outcomes have no bearing on the moral worth of acts, for Kant.
Mill and Aristotle agree that happiness is morally relevant. Utilitarianism holds that the good act is the one that aims to maximize happiness (which, for Mill means pleasure), i.e., aims to attain the greatest (net) good (happiness/pleasure) for the greatest number. For Mill, then, we could say that intention matters only if the intention is to maximize happiness – for him, that would be a good intention, the morally praiseworthy motive for action.
Aristotle defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with the highest virtue. It would be impossible to separate happiness and worthiness in Aristotle’s view. The truly happy (supremely fulfilled and actualized) person would be a highly virtuous person.
Kant would be least relativistic in his view of the good. Philosophers actually distinguish the good from the right, and for Kant the right (adherence to the moral law) takes precedence over the good (what brings pleasure and satisfaction). But we could put it this way: For Kant, the good for us rational beings is the good will (the intention to do right, to do one’s duty because it is a duty), as that is being what we most truly are: rational beings.
Aristotle would be more relativistic in a sense. His position is a relative absolutism. All should develop the moral virtues, but how those virtues manifest themselves in each person’s life will be different. It is not, however, a subjective determination as to what counts, for instance, as generosity or bravery. For any person, there is an objective meaning to each virtue of which even the person himself might be ignorant.
Mill would be most relativistic, at least in a cultural sense. The greatest good for the greatest number has to take into account who it is who makes up that “number.” Different groups might have different notions about the nature of happiness, but within each culture there is some sense as to which acts promote or detract from overall happiness. It is never simply “anything goes” for any moral philosopher.
Aristotle and Kant might agree that it is the way an act gets performed that matters. For Kant, the right way is to act from the right intention (i.e., have a good will). For Aristotle, the right way is to aim at the mean between extremes of a given behavior, or as he says in numerous places, not just to do the right thing but to do it at the right time with the right person in the right manner for the right reasons (which, he never fails to remind us, is difficult).
Kant is certainly an a priori moralist. The structure of reason determines the dictates of the moral law and this makes moral experience possible in the first place. Kant holds that we would never be able to discover the objective moral law empirically (and there is no sense to the term “subjective moral law” – subjective law is an oxymoron). He learned this from Hume, who “awakened him from his dogmatic slumber” about such things.
Mill is something like an a priori moralist in that he holds that ethics, unlike the natural sciences, moves from principles to particulars. In the natural sciences, first we notice it raining today and then work to find out why it rains in general (the principles of rain). In ethics, unless we knew what we wanted or “where we were headed,” we would never be able to judge a given act to be a particular instance of a good act or not. He holds that we do have this principle “up front,” because it derives from the very nature of life itself: the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Given that principle, we can judge whether acts increase or decrease pleasure and call them “good” or not.
Aristotle does not appear to be an a priori moralist. He says we have to be brought up to recognize good acts, good habits, virtues, and that we do not have virtues or know them by nature (i.e., “up front”). In this view, he is more akin to the empiricist Hume. “Good,” at least at the beginning, is what people say good is. However, unlike Hume, Aristotle (that student of Plato), thinks we do have access to truths that transcend the data of the senses. Therefore, unlike Hume, Aristotle is able to provide the resources for a critique of the general moral views of a society. Hume, on the other hand, must hold that whatever the society (in general) holds to be good must be good (as there is no other way to judge).
In this last sense, Hume is like Mill. Mill says that from the decisions of competent judges there can be no appeal. That’s as good as we’re ever going to get, and so it is important to develop as many competent judges as possible (given the fallibility of even knowledgeable persons). In this sense, both are different from Kant, whose theory provides the resources for a thorough-going critique of social norms. Humean moral theory is favored by conservatives and traditionalists (especially those who are not theists). Kantian moral theory is favored by liberals, radicals, and even revolutionaries.
Theistic moral theories are a priori, of course, as the moral law is a commandment of God. There are a variety of theories consistent with theism about how moral virtues are developed. Theistic moral theories are a two-edged sword. They can be used by conservatives and traditionalists to suppress dissent, but they can also be used by radicals and revolutionaries to critique status quo policies (see Liberation Theology/Ethics).