Consequentialism and absolutism
In Harvard University's Justice with Micheal Sandel, the first lecture "The Moral Side of Murder", Professor Micheal Sandel tells about a thought experiment: the traction test. "Suppose you are the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurdling down the track at a high speed, and you noticed there are five workers working on the track, you tried to stop but you can't, the brakes stopped working, you feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers, they are going to die, so you feel helpless until you notice that there is off to the right, a side track, at the end of that track, there's only one worker working on the track, your steering wheel works, so you can turn the trolley car if you want to, onto the side track. Killing the one, but sparing the five. What's the right thing to do in this situation?"(Micheal,2005)
You have two options here:
- Do nothing, and the trolley car kills the five workers on the main track but save that one worker on the side track.
- Pull the lever, diverting the trolley car onto the side track where it will kill one worker but save five workers on the main track.
Which is the most ethical choice?” (Wikipedia)
There are two different students’ opinion. One part of students agreed that it’s valuable to sacrifice the minority in order to save the majority. The rest students thought that if we choose to kill the innocent worker, there is no difference from a murder.
Based on this, we will find two opposite academic points of view: consequentialism and absolutism. In consequentialism, the correctness of behavior is based on the results after this behavior as known as the influence of our action. For instance, the death of five people is much more serious than the death of only one person because the death of five people means sadness of five families. The death of one person seems to be more valuable.
In absolutism, morality has its own tenet, responsibility and right. No matter what the result is, you don’t have any rights to make the decision about life or death. Otherwise, it’s a murder.
Citations:
"Trolley problem." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Feb. 2017. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.
Sandel, M. (2017, February 20). The Moral Side of Murder. Lecture presented at Harvard University's Justice with Micheal Sandel in Harvard University, Cambridge.
When talking about consequentialism and absolutism, there is a great example story from a very popular online game called “World of Warcraft”. In the game, Arthas Menethil, the Crown Prince of Lordaeron Kingdom and Knight of the Silver Hand, was the son of King Terenas and heir to the throne.
When the liches attack the human city of Stratholme, all the people of Stratholme have been infected by plague, and they will all soon become liches. When Arthas arrived, he found that the grain had already been distributed, and noticed that the people will soon become undead liches. He ordered his teacher Uther and his knights to purge the entire city. Uther declined the order, he said he would never follow such an order. Arthas then disbanded the knights of Silver Hand and purge the whole city. Why Uther disobeyed the order? Because he believes in absolutism, because morality has its own tenet responsibility and rights. No matter what the result is, we don’t have any rights to make the decision about others life or death. Is Uther wrong? I can’t say that, he chose to do what’s morally right. Is Arthas wrong? That’s a more controversial question. Arthas made the consequential decision, the result is the same as turning the steering wheel and kill the one, but sparing the five. Arthas’s method seems crueler than the consequential decision in the traction test. The difficulties that the prince was facing are: 1. The people who haven’t turn into liches will soon become liches. 2. Liches has no human feelings, and their fighting ability is much greater than human, so it costs more to kill a lich than kill a human, and fighting with liches will bring heavy casualties to his soldiers. 3. Time is urgent, the plague infected people will mutate very soon, people who being killed by liches will also become liches, he has no time to identify who is infected and who is not. If you are Arthas, which would you choose?
Arthas can’t risk his soldiers, so he made the consequential choice. What’s after? Arthas feel conscience condemned, with such a heavy psychological burden, he demented and fall into the trap of the enemy. At the end, Arthas has been cursed and become the Lich King, one of the best-known villain in the game.
When talking about the consequentialism, the people who make consequential decisions may have to take such conscience condemned.
There is no advantage and disadvantage between consequentialism and absolutism, but if you excessively believe in one of them, that will get you in trouble.
Utilitarianism, is a theory of moral philosophy. Advocating the pursuit of “the greatest happiness”. Its main philosophers are John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, etc. utilitarianism believes that people should make good behaviors that will maximize others benefits. The so-called “good behavior” should be rely on the behavior of everyone involved to make sure that everyone is treated as the same quantity. The sense of happiness and pain can be exchanged, the pain is the sense of “negative happiness”.
The representative of absolutism is the 18th century German philosopher Kant. The moral absolutism, believes that everything can be judged by using a perfect standard. Moral and ethical problems are not affected by the society or occasion. According to the moral absolutism, morality exists in universal laws, human nature, and other basic sources. Moral absolutism is sometimes compared to the corresponding moral relativism, and it can be summarized into a simple statement: “What’s right is right, what’s wrong is wrong.”.
For our society, for our justice and equality. There will be no right answer to those.
There are two rooms, you and your friends are in a room, there is another guy in the other room. A grenade, falling from the sky is about to blast, you and your friends have nowhere to hide, you two will definitely be killed. But you have the chance to throw the grenade through a small hole to the other room and get you and your friend secured, but this action will cause another person die.
What’s your choice? If you throw it, that’s consequentialism, the only thing that you considered is the result. If you and your friend would rather die than hurt someone else, this action belongs to absolutism, always focus on the process, as long as the process and the choice you made are in accordance with justice, then the results can be considered less important.
Consequentialism and absolutism, they are not always contradictory. There is no advantage or disadvantage between these two, different people will have different views about different things, their views can be impacted by their families, friends, educations. Also, consequentialism is different than egoism.
There is no advantage or disadvantage between the two beliefs, but if you are being excessive faithful to one of these two beliefs, it could cause something bad to happen.
For example, “With the name of consequentialism, make the world a better place.” – Adolf Hitler; “With the name of absolutism, make the world a better place.” – Angela Merkel. The first one extinct others, second one extinct themselves.
A few years ago, when Angela Merkel said: “I can’t help you.” and refused the refugee request from a child. Many Germans called her “cold-blooded”, “female Hitler” and so on. Under the domestic pressure, Angela Merkel made a quick decision of refugee’s entry. The Germans were so happy at that time because they thought they did the right thing and saved those homeless refugees. But everything changed in less than two years, the refugees caused so many problems to Germany, people started to complain again, Angela Merkel has been blamed for made the decision of refugee’s entry without consideration about the consequences. The irony is that the people who were blaming her for helping refugees were the same group of people who were calling her “female Hitler”.
