In The Prince by Machiavelli the prince was advised by Machiavelli to
basically do anything and everything to keep power of his state. This includes appearing
to be a “virtuous” leader and deceiving his country about many things including
his choice of religion. Machiavelli justifies this deception by saying it will
all be worth it in the end when the state succeeds and the prince keeps his
position of power. This brings up the question
do the ends justify the means. In class we said we would get to this question
next week, but I thought since we didn’t really talk about it yet this could
get us started on a discussion about what we’ll be talking about next week.
A Machiavellian example of the ends
justify the means would be for the prince to be justified in completely destroying
another country as long as it meant the success of the prince and his country. This
idea of using immoral tactics to maintain order and safety of a country is
still around today. Politicians have always made many decisions that we as a
country didn’t feel were morally sound.
Earlier in week, we discussed the issue of waterboarding and other torture
tactics that were being used to attempt to keep the nation safe. To many
Americans these ways were not moral and they shouldn’t be used as a way of
keeping the nation safe and trying to retrieve information from terrorist http://www.nj.com/times-opinion/index.ssf/2012/05/opinion_attempts_to_justify_ci.html
. But others argue that this and other immoral acts are a necessity to America’s
health and safety. But when it comes to the safety of our country
would we rather be safe than sorry? To some who are pro-torture the means
(using immoral tactics) could justify the ends (keeping our country safe).
This
principle doesn’t always have to apply to government and other people in power.
It could also relate to everyday people in their everyday lives. For instance,
in high school someone could cheat on test to make good grades so they could
get a scholarship and get into college.
For the student, getting the scholarship would justify the immoral
actions of cheating on tests and assignments.
For the Machiavellian prince as
long as you do whatever it takes to maintain the power of your state you are
doing the right/ “moral” thing. But is this just a way for immoral people to
justify their immoral actions? So do the ends ALWAYS justify the means?
Dear Cassandra,
ReplyDeleteI thought this response was very well thought out, and it had many valid points. But I would like to tell you what I think about situations like these, and forgive me if I come off as biased. Call me Naive, but I like to think what goes around comes around. Some might call it karma, but I believe that there is a natural balance of order in this world. The situation in which the student cheats on a test to obtain a scholarship is a good example for my argument. If the student cheats to get a scholarship to get into college, he or she is in college, however the student has done himself a disservice by cheating because now he or she is entering college at a disadvantage because the student has unjustly entered the school, the student is more than likely behind his or her classmates intellectually, and he or she is already predisposed to cheating. If the student cheated once what is stopping him or her from doing it again? Immoral actions lead to more immoral actions. One must look at both sides however. For instance, what if the student only needed the scholarship to obtain a shot at going to college, and with this opportunity the student goes cures cancer? There is no constant or set standard that can be used to predict immoral behavior, and the fact is that all humans indulge in immoral behavior at one time or another. In the case of the American Government, many morally questionable decisions have been made throughout the nations history that would disgust most citizens, however these decisions are what made America the best country in the nation. In the case of Guantanamo bay, terrorists are being tortured, and if there was enough public support to shut it down, it would be closed by now. The fact of the matter is that people value there own well being, or in America's case their freedom, over the lives of somebody who is trying to and has compromise it.
Respecting the natural balance of good’s and bad’s of the world is an interesting topic. However, I’m not sure if we know about the extent and details about this balance if there is one. There is a lots of balances in nature, but is there one in morality? Do the moral deeds/events in the world balance out the immoral deeds/events? If not, I’ll assume we are talking about the morality of personal actions here.
ReplyDeleteWhat comes around goes around is our intuition, but is it true? I am dubious that the morality of our actions is determined outside of our selves. Factors other then Karma may contribute to the façade of truth in the familiar saying. For example, confirmation bias is quite convenient for helping you find all those instances when the wrongs you did came back and hit you when all that happened was you got bad luck just like the rest of the time you got bad luck (Wikipedia.org). One’s psychological condition is changed when one does either a good deed or a bad one. We might feel more positive and happy when we did something good, and feel somewhat guilty and depressed after our shenanigans. We know how happy we feel does have an effect on our performances. Furthermore, we might unconsciously do more good deeds when we are expecting something good to happen. When the expectation is fulfilled, we thank Karma (converse et al.).
Torturing is shady; saying that it protects the country doesn’t make it less shady. Unreliable information and morality aside, the practice still has heavier cons than pros. As the New Jersey.com articles says, Rodriguez’s claim to justification doesn’t stand when it comes to our intuitions. It just doesn’t sound right that our government, the one we respect and love, is doing something heavily despised since the end of WWII, when we realized sometimes we forget others are humans too, they have a mental realm too. Possibly contrary to the case of Karma, our intuition might be on the right track in this case.
if we do agree to value human lives: it puts the torturers in harms way psychologically; it also puts innocent people in danger for being tortured. If torturing a criminal is justified when it saves a million lives, would torturing an innocent, criminal’s daughter be also justified? Our nation is founded on the ideas of equality and liberty; it seems not only hypocritical, but brutally selfish of us to allow torture, which completely takes away a victim’s physical freedom, psychological freedom, and freedom of speech. Not to go down a slippery slope, but how free do we think a society that acquiesces torture is? If we say we are not disvaluing all human freedom, just that of some over others, it is rather hard to draw a line between the norm and the some. How un-human do I need to be for you to start maligning my dignity?
Converse et al. “Investing in Karma: When Wanting Promotes Helping” Psychological Science
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/07/02/0956797612437248.abstract
“Confirmation bias” Wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
The better safe than sorry mentality could go very badly very quickly. A leader of a nation has many decisions to make every day and every single one of them will probably affect (a lot of) people. It implies that any humans he or she encounter could and will probably be means at some point, rather than humans with inherent worth and dignity. If the leader wants to just tie up any possible loose ends, he or she would constantly do immoral things. Why not kill that powerful other nation's leader simply because he or she would be a potential threat some day? A leader's own people may pose a potential threat and need to be destroyed as well. Deciding to do immoral things (ex: torture) is already a terrible thing to do when it seems necessary. When a person does something simply because of potential threats, it opens up whole new possibilities of wrongdoing.
ReplyDelete