Could You Be Justified in Taking One Innocent Life in Order to Save the Lives of Many?
Could you be justified in taking one innocent life in order to save the lives of many?
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The justification in taking the life of one to save the life of many - This is a philosophical dilemma that has been discussed and debated over countless decades by various philosophers and ethicists. It is a question of human morality and ethical decisions.
Varied cases and dilemmas regarding life and death of a fellow human being have aroused and created strong feelings, because when people feel so strongly about an issue we just know or feel what is the truth, and what is right or wrong.
Emotions can however, cloud our judgement and may be irrational or cause us to make aberrant decisions and choices.
Emotions can also be products of prejudice, selfishness or cultural conditioning, for example the treatment of different races as inferior and slavery were the result of people’s feelings telling them it was God’s plan.
“…We must let our feelings to be guided as much as possible by reason. This is the essence of morality. The morally right thing to do is always the thing best supported by the arguments.”
To use reason is to allow us to make the right / good ethical decisions or choices without relying on the irrationality of emotion alone.
Normative ethics is part of moral philosophy, or ethics, concerned with criteria of what is morally right and wrong and includes the formulation of moral rules that have direct implications for what human actions, institutions, and ways of life should be like.
It is the attempt to devise and establish a set of principles, which can then be used as guidelines and applied to practical ethical problems.
The central question of normative ethics is determining how basic moral standards are arrived at and justified.
When considering the title of this essay and the question ‘Could you be
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The justification in taking the life of one to save the life of many - This is a philosophical dilemma that has been discussed and debated over countless decades by various philosophers and ethicists. It is a question of human morality and ethical decisions.
Varied cases and dilemmas regarding life and death of a fellow human being have aroused and created strong feelings, because when people feel so strongly about an issue we just know or feel what is the truth, and what is right or wrong.
Emotions can however, cloud our judgement and may be irrational or cause us to make aberrant decisions and choices.
Emotions can also be products of prejudice, selfishness or cultural conditioning, for example the treatment of different races as inferior and slavery were the result of people’s feelings telling them it was God’s plan.
“…We must let our feelings to be guided as much as possible by reason. This is the essence of morality. The morally right thing to do is always the thing best supported by the arguments.”
To use reason is to allow us to make the right / good ethical decisions or choices without relying on the irrationality of emotion alone.
Normative ethics is part of moral philosophy, or ethics, concerned with criteria of what is morally right and wrong and includes the formulation of moral rules that have direct implications for what human actions, institutions, and ways of life should be like.
It is the attempt to devise and establish a set of principles, which can then be used as guidelines and applied to practical ethical problems.
The central question of normative ethics is determining how basic moral standards are arrived at and justified.
When considering the title of this essay and the question ‘Could you be