There are caveats to everything. There will always be some situation in which the "wrong behavior" is deemed acceptable due to circumstances. That is why it is difficult to exact a supreme rule for moral living. That is also why I had difficulty with the MMPI personality test in Psychology (You can't make a general statement like that, because sometimes I am messy, but others times I am neat to the point of OCD!)
I can make a few general statements. It is not ethical to hurt or put someone else at risk, emotionally of physically. Raskolnikov killed innocents, and Marmeledov let his children and wife starve and contract diseases. The former was desperately poor, and the latter had a disease, alcoholism, but the point is that they hurt others. Neither intended to, but that does a fat lot of good to Lizabeta now.
I had difficulty during the most to least evil activity. I stick to my group's overall decision, but I do agree with Sarah that intent matters...to a point. One can intend to kill to distribute money to the needy, but if nothing good comes of the money, then that is doubly bad. Pure accidents can be forgiven, and so can things necessary for the greater good. It is a tricky concept "for the greater good", but an essential one. It is like the story I mentioned in class: if a whole city could live in harmony and happiness all for the suffering of one child, would that be acceptable? Take away the argument that it is necessary to suffer in order to be completely human, and you have a difficult moral decision. I am also reminded of the plot of Watchmen (No, I haven't read it. I watched the movie and looked it up. Spoilers here.) Part of what happens at the end is that the entirety of humanity can be saved from a world-ending atomic war, or have millions of people die. One always wishes to have lesser amounts of casualties, but if one orchestrates and is responsible for innocent human losses, a different spin is put on the dilemma.
Raskolnikov intended to help people, but he had other options. Taking a life in order to help many is not excusable. This was not his only choice.
I agree that committing murder for the "greater good" is on somewhat shaky ground, but can a person driven to murder really understand what the greater good is? There's always an option before murder, and I too believe that Raskolnikov's actions were unacceptable.No intentions can be pure when they involve blood soaked hands.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not think Raskolnikov intended to help people as his first thought in killing Alyona Ivanovna. Rather, Raskolnikov decides to use the whole "for the good of all humanity" card in order to justify his gruesome crime. Anyway, I feel that you have a core concept I believe everyone mentions at least a little: it is wrong to commit a crime. Yes, it is understandable that by doing a bad thing, one must be punished in order fro them to learn the error of one's ways, but what is crime? What actions consist of material only belonging to crime and not to any sympathetic morals? Aside from murder, such as in the story of Caine and Abel, someone's morals must have originally declared the constitution of crime, and from since it has survived. So, in a sense, nobody has morals all their own, but rather the fleeting remnants of the morals of some mysterious progenitor who was the first to recognize his conscientiousness.
ReplyDeleteRyan: I agree that the "greater good" card Raskolnikov played was simply a means of justification.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you say punishment is so one can learn the error of their ways. While we may wish it happens, I don't think that is what actually does happen. Humans want others to suffer for what they themselves have suffered, or can imagine themselves to suffer.
And I think morals are not just what we are taught. I believe they are mostly innate. When it comes to the tricky decisions like weighing one life versus another, that takes rationality. But the basic concepts are ones every sane, stable human feels. I do not want to kill another because I know it will hurt them, and they won't like it. I know that, because that is how I would feel if it were me. Humans mostly have respect for one another when placed outside of the main traps of society, in which everyone is compartmentalized. Damn, I wish I put this in my blog.