It Is Always Wrong to Kill Innocent People, Even If You Could Save Many Other Lives by Doing So - Essay Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Whether it is Necessary to Kill Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Introduction I believe what determines something to be either moral or immoral depends on the number of people for or against an act. It is morally advisable to kill one innocent person to save the lives of many other innocent people. An act can either be morally permissible or morally normative. Morally permissible may be defined as an affirmative action taken during circumstantial standard. Thomas Aquinas states that killing one person is justified, as long as one did not purpose to kill. He further states that nothing stops an individual from taking both effects. This involves, saving the life of an individual at the expense of many other people, or sparing the life of one individual at the expense of many. He however continues and says that, self-defense is conditional. Although ones intension may be with no ill motive’, the court may however, allege the act to be unlawful. It may be so if the defendant used an extreme force to execute his actions. However, the issue of moral permissibility may be espousing by moral proportional. Moral proportionality may be defined as a tool used to determine the extent of moral permissibility. When faced in with such a dilemma, one ought to examine the degree of permissibility of a specific action (Munson & Munson, 2000). Protection to life Looking at a broader point of view, someone is bound to lose his/her life, no matter what step shall be taken. Whether the defendant decides on sparing the life of one individual or not, by taking one’s life, you save on many other lives that would be lost. This helps to reduce the number of deaths and thus reduce the liability of the defendant. If the defendant decides to take the other alternative, many lives are bound to be lost. For example; a doctor who decides on injecting a seriously ill patient with an over dose of morphine drug would be acting contrary to the patients will and thus ending the patient’s life, the doctor would be said to have acted impermissibly, therefore he will be liable for the tort committed in the course of his work. Thus, he would be charged for voluntarily murder. Whereas, a doctor who decides to end the life his ail patient in order to reduce his suffering and pain shall not be liable for the tort committed. Another example is; to execute a person who intends to take your life would amount to impermissible because that would be an intentional killing. If you kill someone in the course of defending yourself it will amount to permissibility (Hankley, 1987). However, for you to use self- defense as a defense, you have to prove the following; That you did not have a choice The thing must be proportional to the act, i.e. if someone pours a full basket of water at someone, he cannot take out his gun and shoot at that person. But instead, it would be advisable to do the same; otherwise it would amount to infringing one right. That you were protecting your life or the life of another person which was in danger at that moment. Reducing the violation rights Since taking the other alternative would lead to a massive loss, which would then amount to a greater loss of life thus violating many people rights. Right to life will enable an individual to do lots of thing, both negative and positive. But without life, it is impossible to do certain things. Life is important, it enables an individual to carry out the following aspect while he is still alive, own property, right to liberty, to move, speak and to worship etc. Taking so many lives will automatically violate large amount of rights. Reducing joint damage Joint damage is that which reduces morally permissible action. By killing an individual, it will surely save many lives were ought to be lost. Through killing an individual, it will allow the defendant to reduce his liability. For instance, for a driver, driving a bus, carrying passengers from one place to another, reaches a place where someone is crossing the road, going to an opposite direction and on the other side of the road, there’s a river. In such a situation the driver will have to use his intellectual intelligence. It would be advisable for him to knock down that one person in order to save the rest of passengers. In order to be granted moral permissibility, decrease in joint damage is very important (Hankley, 1987) Utilitarianism For the rule to apply it is important to consider the number of people you are going to save, it would be irrelevant to save an individual at the expense of two or more people. Utilitarianism requires that the course of your action should yield/bring happiness but not the opposite of it. The historical evidence of double effect provides the same explanation for this application. Catholic casuistry, states that, where a person assumes by taking the life of an individual, he will be infringing that person’s right to life .therefore it won’t be permissible to take the life of that individual, then the rule of self defense shall not apply in this case. Even when your intension was to save the entire group of people was good (Davis, 1984). Argument 2: Circumstantial ethics According to this clause, While deciding on what moral to apply, it is important to note that there are two things involved: you must evaluate and ensure that, the action you are about to take is not repugnant to justice and morality. The second one is that, you must consider the consequences of your action which you are about to take, or you have already taken. When someone is faced with that kind of dilemma .The consequences must be foremost. Since whatever action you decide to take will eventually cause death, the permissibility of such a situation is determined by the resulting consequences. Therefore killing a life of one individual to exclude the rest of the other people is necessary. Taking the alternative of this clause (saving an individual and killing lot of other people) will dually violate the same clause. However, another person may decide not to take any action at all, this is very dangerous since it will cost so many innocent lives that could be probably be saved. According to circumstantial ethics life must be saved no matter the danger. Failure to do will violate the clause (Martin, 1988). Argument 3: Mischief Principle This principle states that, an action shall and will only be morally permissible if it has the ability to prevent a bigger harm to people and society at large. Society may be defined as a group of people who live in a certain region. It is a sufficient plan, trying to forgo an innocent person for the benefit of the other group of people. However, the only way to ensure that this right is fully exercised is by ensuring this principle is strictly adhered to. By sacrificing one individual will help the society’s population to remain intact (Munson & Munson, 2000). Aquinas Thomas principle states that, it is not obvious that some of the examples that are thought to have double effect appear to justify and expounded to explain the concept of double effect. For this principle to apply a certain condition must be achieved, failure to follow the stipulated and stated condition, it will amount to breach, thus punishable by the state or country. However this justification are not derivative from the difference between projected and merely prediction of the consequences’ .Therefore person-sacrifice might constitute permissibly causing death that would be a better option one could think of. To conclude on this aspect, I fully support the fact that it is not always wrong to kill one individual for the sake of saving lives of many people. One lost life cannot be compared with thousands of lives that are ought to be lost, if an appropriate step is not taken. People should however be educated on the importance of making up their mind when such a situation occurs, failure of taking any step would mean losing more and more lives. However, this action must be taken with no ill motive (intension to kill). Bibligraphy Davis, N., 1984, “The Doctrine of Double Effect: Problems of Interpretation,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 65: 107–23; reprinted in Woodward (ed.), 119–142. Martin, C., 1988, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Introductory Readings. London: Routledge Kegan & Paul. Munson, R. & Munson, M., 2000, Intervention and reflection: basic issues in medical ethics Philosophy Series Wadsworth Publishers, New Jersey. Hankley, W. J., 1987, God in Himself: Aquinas' Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Read More