The many must be saved
Is killing Morally Permissible?
Obviously, killing people has never been rational or ideal and if in case, there comes the situation of killing anyone, it must be the last option and it is very necessary to reduce the loss of life as far as possible. For such circumstances, if a single person’s death saves the life of other, it is permissible to do so when there are no options to save those life (Crockett, 2013).
The question is already shown in the abstract but it is very obvious that one will not have any choices from the abstract. No one can ever know for sure that the actions to kill someone with a faith to save the life of many will be fruitful. In such circumstances, all a person will know is whether or not, she/he will pick to do is kill someone. Do not do bad in the faith that good will come. What one should do is do your best and refrain from murder. God individually will pick or save or kill any other people who is involved in doing so (Christians, Richardson, Fackler, Kreshel and Woods, 2015).
On the place of the better good, surrendering one will be ethically greater to surrendering many. Can one live with the guilt throughout his whole life? Is it morally right to murder an innocent to save the number of innocent people? Or is it morally right to sacrifice many innocent to save the life of one individual? (Paxton, Ungar and Greene, 2012).
If one evaluates the consequences on a distant balance, saving an individual versus saving many, it is but obvious ethically greater to pick the second option. But if evaluating morally, none of the options are best because at the end you will end up killing someone. Killing someone is absolutely impermissible no matter what the circumstances takes place. Thus, “morally permissible” encounters in the ethical ideas of the majority of the people (Cushman, Young and Greene, 2010). If only looking at the results of the situation, will the majority be incapable to or eager to sacrifice one? Can they take the responsibility of that one life which has been killed just with the hope of saving the life of many? Until and unless the circumstances gets really tough and honestly desperate, the common nature of human beings will only allow the former. Which is why not everyone can actually understand the decisions that has been made (Hoffman, Frederick and Schwartz, 2014).
For the Better Good
Being totally dependent on the actual meaning of murder, it might go from that of trivial to quite complex to defend. If murder is considered as immoral, then it is an obvious unimportant and vague thing. If it is against law to kill someone, then one must be open to the causes and effects that it might be ethical to murder someone unlawfully particularly if there exists bad laws. For an instance, let us prove that some murders are ethically wrong no matter what the circumstances are. It is not much of a pressure: majority of people have a thought that some murders can easily be justifies and all that is important is explaining why few of them are incorrect or why killing someone is prima facie incorrect (Tobia, Buckwalter and Stich, 2013).
Happiness must be optimized. Well, not tough to visualize how few murders are ethically incorrect. Few murders can create more pain than creating pleasure and enjoyment. In fact, it might be stated that killing people is Prima facie incorrect, just because it is quite obvious that generally killing create severe pain as compared to the pleasure that is felt while saving someone’s life. In case of animals, numerous utilitarian’s state that murdering animals is incorrect, however, it can be fun and pain as well. Consequently, many people complement that animals naturally have lower fun and pains (Slote, 2010). This simply mean that it is prima facie incorrect to murder animals but that it will be quite simple to validate killing the one, say just because one need food to eat, and the fun is taken by killing the one and the pain that they cause seems to be very low as compared to the fun that one gets by eating them. Killing them seems to be fun when one becomes so desperate to eat them.
The tentative imperative is the base necessity on how one must act to be ethical. There are large number of formulations of Kant’s tentative imperative, but the most important one is the second number. “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” Killing, just because it defeats the opportunity of the other individual to meet their own objectives that has been set by them to lead a successful life. Human being are rational and they must be appreciated and they must have the quest of their individual ends appreciated (Slim, 2010). Kant will refuse that animals are also considered to be rational and which state that animals are not supposed to deserve ethical consideration. But this really does not state that one can kill animals because there can be something great instead of intrinsic value of rationality such as instrumental importance. Thus, this clearly state that killing human beings is morally unethical while killing animals is possible allowed (Pizarro and Tannenbaum, 2011).
Taking the basic theory i.e. Utilitarianism
Virtue ethics majorly keeps a focus on the specific traits of characters which are generally found between two major extremes. Cowardice is a rough trait of character, thus it is rashness but audacity- the suitable balance that takes place between cowardice and rashness- is an asset (Kagan, 2018). There are huge number of virtues and one must act in ways which embody those assets. The murders which are totally justifies are those which do not go against those assets: safeguarding the family members from bandits, possibly. On the contrary, murdering one’s boss just because of jealousy and envy do not symbolize virtues. However, majority of murders are not purely honorable, and it can be stated that killing is generally unethical (Abarbanell and Hauser, 2010).
Killing someone is not morally ethical at any cost. Although, when it comes to doing well to someone and killing one for doing so, it is not at all acceptable. The point is doing well for one is not morally ethical by killing another because ultimately, you will end up losing a life which is totally wrong. Not in case of only human, killing animals just for fun or anything else is also equally wrong. There are numerous murderers who can easily justify themselves in order to kill someone but those justification should not be at all considered. Moreover, there must be tied knot that killing is morally unethical at any cost no matter what.
Thus, this is a try to answer the question from three major points of views i.e. Virtue ethics, Kantian Deontology and Utilitarianism theory which also covers the prime ethical frameworks. However, from the above essay it can easily be concluded that killing someone at any circumstances is unethical (Navarrete, McDonald, Mott and Asher, 2012). No matter what the situation is or no matter it may save the life of other many, killing one for the sake of many is totally wrong because one is not sure about the effects of killing one to saving many is fruitful or not. This might not be a good idea or a thought to kill someone just to save others.
References
Abarbanell, L. and Hauser, M.D., 2010. Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms. Cognition, 115(2), pp.207-224.
Christians, C.G., Richardson, K.B., Fackler, M., Kreshel, P. and Woods, R.H., 2015. Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, Course Smart textbook
Crockett, M.J., 2013. Models of morality. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(8), pp.363-366.
Cushman, F., Young, L. and Greene, J.D., 2010. Our multi-system moral psychology: Towards a consensus view. The Oxford handbook of moral psychology, pp.47-71.
Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014. Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality. John Wiley & Sons.
Kagan, S., 2018. Normative ethics. Routledge.
Navarrete, C.D., McDonald, M.M., Mott, M.L. and Asher, B., 2012. Virtual morality: Emotion and action in a simulated three-dimensional “trolley problem”. Emotion, 12(2), p.364.
Paxton, J.M., Ungar, L. and Greene, J.D., 2012. Reflection and reasoning in moral judgment. Cognitive Science, 36(1), pp.163-177.
Pizarro, D.A. and Tannenbaum, D., 2011. Bringing character back: How the motivation to evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame. The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil, pp.91-108.
Slim, H., 2010. Killing civilians: method, madness and morality in war. C Hurst Publishers Limited.
Slote, M., 2010. Virtue ethics. In The Routledge companion to ethics (pp. 504-515). Routledge.
Tobia, K., Buckwalter, W. and Stich, S., 2013. Moral intuitions: Are philosophers experts. Philosophical Psychology, 26(5), pp.629-638.
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