Does an end justify a means?

Unfortunately, answers to this cornerstone question of ethical thought often take form in the simple polarity of yes and no. While many areas of ethics deserve to be treated as ultimately black and white issues, I maintain that this is not one of them.



To state give my summarized opinion at the outset, I believe that the statement the ends justify the means is false not inherently, but by overgeneralization. Even those who use the phrase as a definitive example of bad ethics probably use the basic principle in many of their own ethical judgements, and rightly so. However, rigid adherence to it would result in generally acknowledged ethical horrors.



For example, suppose that medical science was able to produce a new drug that cured cancer, but happened to be made from turtle shells, and therefore required the harvesting of turtles. Provided that the turtles were killed painlessly and no species were endangered, there would probably be no more objection to the practice than that of butchering beef cattle. However, killing turtles and grinding up their shells as Sunday afternoon hobby would be seen as unethical. Therefore, a practice done without legitimate cause is viewed as wrong, while the same thing, when done as part of lifesaving procedure, is considered ethical. The end justifies the means. However, if our hypothical cancer cure required the slaughter of a few hundred people in order to obtain a substance only found in living brains would be viewed as abominable, even though it would save many more people than it would kill.



Is the moral question then answered merely by the difference in severity between the condition and the treatment? In affirmation of my label for the issue as cornerstone question, it appears as though it is contingent to many different ethical and philosphical issues, such as the the universal versus the individual. Indeed, it has the possibility of becoming deeply complex. However, without succumbing to the temptation to oversimplify an inherently complex question, we also need to recognize that the issue has tremendously practical implications, and we need to be able to make some basic discernments without having to write a philosophical disseratation.
If we are therefore going to attempt to distill the question of wether the end justifies the means to a workable level of simplicity, I have a concept of how I feel it is best to do so.

First of all, in dissagreement with a deonotological view of ethics, which sees the morality of an action being resident merely in the act itself without respect to motives, I cannot help but be compelled by the basic reason underlying the statement that "the end justifies the means." What, after all, does justify an action? I think that there are two basic principles that have bearing on this question. The first is, as alluded above, the intrinsic morality of the act itself. This consideration derives from the understanding of the universe as having an inherently moral character. There is a way things were meant to be. There are physical laws which govern how matter and energy behave, and there are also moral laws which derive a basic value system of good and evil. Murder and rape are bad because they fly in the face of the way that the world was meant to be. Any action can therefore be measured against this cosmic or divine ideal. Outside of any regard of motivation behind an action, the action either conforms to the law of God, or as others would have it, the natural law of universe, or else it does not. Case closed.

The other principle at work is our role as agents capable of action. If we operate off of this principle alone, we arrive at an opposite perspective: that right and wrong are matters of the heart and exist with respect to human free will. This is a kind of foil to the coldness of the first principle; that a man who accidently kills someone is just as guilty as the man who does so intentionally.

What is vital to recognize is that the second principle is impossible to separate from the first. Our role of moral agenthood in the world can only stand upon this same foundation of a moral reality in the universe, which does not merely decree impersonal laws, but is the source of what it means to be human: what we are here for, and therefore, how we should live. This law is not just an impersonal force like gravity, to which we must conform our actions, or else fall to our deaths. It is ultimately to be viewed as something very personal; something to which we ourselves must be conformed, not merely out of brute fear of the consequences, but because conformity to it is the only thing that makes us human, that gives us a sense of purpose, of joy, such that conformity becomes simply a crude, over-technical word for the love in which and for which we were created. Without trying to step upon every stone across the unforgiving river of logic (a task for which I lack time and motivation at present) I will simply give my conclusion from these premises.

Deonotological ethics apply in that anything that happens has a sense of goodness or badness resident in it (although I allow that many happenings can be morally neutral; perhaps I'll stew over that question later.) That goodness or badness has nothing to do with anybody's motives. If a child is run over by a car, it is bad whether or not somebody threw the child's toy's into the street first. More too the point, that occurance is equally contrary to what is good whether or not someone pushed the child or someone tripped the child completely by accident so that they fell into the street. However, the instigator in question has a choice of how much they participate in that tragety. And so do all of us. We have a choice wether we are active causes of evil, or whether we are just a domino that gets knocked over by the next as a consequence to someone else's evil. According to strict deontological ethics, a even hurricane would be culpable for the people it killed. However, common sense tells us that the hurricane is just an impersonal effect resulting in these deaths. The fault lies in whatever (or whoever) brought this world to a fallen state in which things like hurricanes happen. The first principle gives a framework for right and wrong, and the second, the principle of free will, regards how we relate to that framework.

However, this discussion has drifted somewhat from its original aim; to address the question of weather an end justifies the means. In one sense (the sense created by the second principle) the motive( that is, the internal thing) is always that which determine's an agent's moral standing as regards and action. However, this cannot change the rightness or wrongness inherent in the action. I therefore conclude as follows:

An end, in theory justifies the means because we are free moral agents. However, this does not hold true under some circumstances. One is if the end is not a good end at all, in which case the action is clearly wrong altogether. Another is if the means is worse than the ill it is attending heal, which is a clear contradiction within the action. For example, killing people to save them others is a contradition because you are violating a principle (the value of life) in the very attempt to honor it. Often times, using an end to justify a means is truly nothing more than a justification; an excuse to do something we know is wrong but we have convinced ourselves we have the right to do.

Therefore, it is technically correct that an end justifies a means, but we need to treat it more rationally and with the proper caution.