Analysis of Moral Dilemma essays

Analysis of Moral Dilemma essays Philosophers have studied moral concepts of right and wrong for millennia. During this time, great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Bentham, and Kant have developed a number of carefully reasoned and eloquent approaches to moral questions. These approaches in the field of ethics can span from metaethics (the core of ethical principles or universal truths) to the field of normative ethics (which takes a much more practical approach to solving specific problems) to the field of applied ethics (which looks at specific issues like abortion or animal rights) (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Each of these fields of ethics has sparked some often surprisingly elegant approaches to difficult ethical problems. However, in the real word, moral decisions are often much more difficult and confusing than they appear during reasoned ethical analysis. Moral dilemmas like the following illustrate the profound difficulty in coming to an ethical decision under truly trying and confusing circumstances. Imagine that you are an inmate in a concentration camp, and your son is about to be hung by a sadistic prison guard for attempting to escape. The guard wants you to pull out the chair from underneath your son, effectively killing him. The guard says that if you refuse to pull out the chair, he will kill your son and another, innocent, inmate as well. There is no doubt that the guard will carry out his actions. If you decide to pull out the chair from under your son, there are a number of potential consequences, both good and bad. Importantly, if the guard is true to his word, you will have saved the life of another innocent inmate. This is clearly a positive moral action, as preserving human life, especially innocent human life is essentially universally morally desirable. In saving this man's life, you spare both his personal agony, but spare his family and friends f...