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in the shallow end of the pool...
Dec. 10th, 2006 06:59 pmThis has been irritating me for awhile - or a few days - and I'm putting this here to see if I can work this out.
In ethics, we just read an article my Micheal Walzer called "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands." In it, he advocates that in politics, one must surrender some if not all of one's moral precepts to preform the greater good. In other words, he's framing the argument that one has to do the right utilitarian thing with having all the sins of the dentolgical system. I think this is crap - why must the politician feel guilty for doing the correct thing? If one saved five hundred innocent people by ordering the death of one, why must one feel guilty for doing the wrong thing of killing the one man when five hundred others lived because that one man died?
Then there's the more academic reasons that it's just plain sloppy to combine two completely diametrically opposed philosophical view points where one is judged by the end results and the other by the first action.
Though it is kinda obvious that I'm at least partly utilitarian, huh? Well, that and I really wanted Karl Rove's job when I was little, only the front man would be competent so people wouldn't be able to identify the power behind the throne. And the actually ruling bit would probably be boring after awhile, so after capturing the world/presidency, I could go bugger off and retire in Scotland or Maine or something.
Wow, this completely wandered from the point, didn't it? The idea is that don't like the idea is because from my viewpoint - which is mostly utilitarian - is that there is no actual dilemma here. Nor does Walzer have an actual dilemma if he didn't kept mixing up incompatible ethical viewpoints.
In ethics, we just read an article my Micheal Walzer called "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands." In it, he advocates that in politics, one must surrender some if not all of one's moral precepts to preform the greater good. In other words, he's framing the argument that one has to do the right utilitarian thing with having all the sins of the dentolgical system. I think this is crap - why must the politician feel guilty for doing the correct thing? If one saved five hundred innocent people by ordering the death of one, why must one feel guilty for doing the wrong thing of killing the one man when five hundred others lived because that one man died?
Then there's the more academic reasons that it's just plain sloppy to combine two completely diametrically opposed philosophical view points where one is judged by the end results and the other by the first action.
Though it is kinda obvious that I'm at least partly utilitarian, huh? Well, that and I really wanted Karl Rove's job when I was little, only the front man would be competent so people wouldn't be able to identify the power behind the throne. And the actually ruling bit would probably be boring after awhile, so after capturing the world/presidency, I could go bugger off and retire in Scotland or Maine or something.
Wow, this completely wandered from the point, didn't it? The idea is that don't like the idea is because from my viewpoint - which is mostly utilitarian - is that there is no actual dilemma here. Nor does Walzer have an actual dilemma if he didn't kept mixing up incompatible ethical viewpoints.
