Overview
There are cases where ethical choices are a simple either-or matter. However, most of the time, our moral challenges are complex. Often, there are no choices available that will leave us free of moral discomfort. In 1946, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre emphasized this concept with an example of a student who came to him for ethical advice:
[H]is older brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940, and this young man, with primitive but noble feelings, wanted to avenge him.... At the time, the young man had the choice of going to England to join the Free French Forces—which would mean abandoning his mother—or remaining by her side to help her go on with her life. He realized that his mother lived only for him and that his absence—perhaps his death—would plunge her into utter despair.
What should the student do? Sartre had this response:
You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But ... in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose, that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world.
For your initial post, after reflecting on this week’s resources and Sartre’s student’s dilemma, address the following points:
- Say which action the student would choose on utilitarian grounds. Defend that choice by giving two reasons. Then say which he would choose on deontological grounds. Defend that choice by giving two reasons.
- Which of these choices seems stronger to you, both intuitively and as a matter of objective, impartial reasoning?
- What do you think of Sartre’s response to the student? Is it true that, because we all carry the burden of defining ourselves through our ethical choices, theories like utilitarianism and deontology are of no use to the student? Or is there a role for these perspectives when we deliberate about choices that seem wrong in both directions?
- https://youtu.be/DLCUn6h7qRo
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02s9hqj