Ethics and Morality Essay Example for Free

Ethics and Morality Essay Man is a mixture of paradoxes and since his birth always finds himself tangled in the dense thrushes of social and cultural issues. Hamlet by William Shakespear is a best example to deliver us the true intricate nature of a person, how he finds himself in a dilemma, of what is morally right for him and what is morally wrong. An incredible question is raised in front of him, To Be or not to be? As Socrates said, moral philosophy deals with no small matter, but how we ought to live. ( Rachels, 2007) It is quite true, moral philosophy is nothing but how we take issues in our life into consideration. The issue of Abortion is a very complex issue, as anti abortionists and pro abortionists are adamant to follow their own extreme assumption. On the one hand, anti –abortionists says that the loss of one’s life is the very big loss, making a person rob of whole of his life’s activities. Therefore, to kill some one is immoral, on the other hand abortion is justified it protects women from unwanted pregnancy, abortion protects her chastity in case of pregnancy occurring due to rape and any other health hazard which might be dangerous for women and child in case of pregnancy. In case of the danger to the human lives, Can humans react aggressively back in self -defense? There are three aspects to it, firstly if the action is taken place in defense in case of threatened aggression, then the action is preemptive attack and unjustified or if action for defense is used after the attack, it is called as retaliation and this is also unjustified. The importance of imminence rule in self-defense is that, one can resort to defense action only against the attack which is imminent or which is just going to take place. The reason behind this rule is that the action for defense should take place when aggression is nor too late neither too early. But for a battered women killing her abuser on self-defense, even if there is no imminent threat, is considered as justified because the battered woman, may find danger to her life by her husband who though is sleeping at that time may cause her harm when he woke up. This danger by the sleeping husband is though not imminent but she might find herself in a situation that retaliate in return became a most necessary vocation. When women comes to known that there is no hope left to stop the violence, then by the nature women became passive and as a result their capability to identify the alternative sources are disappeared and they can turned their aggressiveness at abusers. ThisBattered Womans Syndrome has allowed the women a self- independent and therefore a most reasonable person who in time of the need can use her force in self defense. Death penalty is a most serious punishment, and amidst lot of controversies surrounding the death penalty, whether the death penalty is justifiable or not? Mill in his most famous speech of 1868, strongly advocated in favor of death penalty. Mill says that actually death penalty is much less cruel than any other form of punishments. He argues that death penalty is only conferred on the very heinous crimes like that of murder and is a least cruel method of inflicting punishment as far as the seriousness of the crime is concerned. If we go by the version that we are following a very horror form of punishement and may adopt some lenient form of punishment then it will no doubt gives the appearance of very less severity and less efficacious but in realty it would be the more cruel form of punishment. Further he said that the nature of punishments in case of pecuniary or not corporal depending on their duration seems to be more severe than actual is but death penalty though appears to be so severe but it is not so. Therefore punishment like death sentence is no doubt a very strict but in realty there are not so in realty. But Kant declares, â€Å"That the legal punishment must always been in response to guilt. † According to Kant, nobody should be punished only because of the utilitarian causes. He further says, â€Å"Judicial punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or civil society, but instead it must in all cases be imposed on him only on the ground that he has committed a crime; for a human being can never be manipulated merely as a means to the purposes of someone else. He must first of all be found to be deserving of punishment before any consideration is given of the utility of this punishment for himself or his fellow citizens. † Kant also says that retribution is not only a most important condition for punishment but also most sufficient†. Retribution can also be said as natural justification, which means man thinks that it is very natural and bad person ought to be punished and a good person should be rewarded. There are two aspects to this theory, Desert Principle means people who do wrong to some one else ought to suffer. In real sense the meaning of Kant is not totally clear. But the idea that is generates stives to speak and is says even though a person who is guilty of murder and for the sake of humanity should be treated with a certain amount of dignity, and the punishments which ignores the humanity of the criminals are outside domain of morality. We can say that we cannot prove that they are not justice, and unadulterated revenge. And according to Kant on retribution with revenge, he says there is always heart in the body The instinct for revenge is a natural one; so is the instinct to take things we want that dont belong to us, as anyone who has spent time around young children will testify. But in real sense the morality wants us human beings to move away from our mere instincts. , this would make it it hard to be a virtuous person. And in the sphere of punishment, morality requires that we respect the humanity but in many cases we can also go against the will of criminals.