May 12, 2009

Of Ends and Means

Does the end justify the means? That's a question that's been cropping up in my thinking quite a bit. In fact I think I've realized that quite a few decisions come down to that very question. And here's an even harder question that I've been puzzling over. Say we have a bad situation, and if this bad situation is left alone, then it will get much worse. Our problem, though, is that there is no way to remedy the situation that will not cause damage. But the damage you would cause in trying to remedy the situation seems to be less than that which would occur you merely left the situation alone. Is harming a situation a good thing if it keeps the situation from escalating to a much worse degree?

My conclusion has been this: in a lot of situations, the end actually *does* justify the means. But I would like to make a point here, one I find often overlooked. And you absolutely cannot take my former statement without this point. Because if someone quoted me as saying "The end justifies the means" then that would be completely not what I'm trying to convey. So first I want to look at a common abuse of the princple.

For some reason, when people decide that in fact the end does justify the means, they seem to begin to think that the means in and of itself is ok. I would like to point out that just because one saves countless lives by assasinating HItler does not in any way make murder an acceptable or good thing. Perhaps it could be argued that in that specific instance the vast number of lives saved would somehow justify the evil of murder; but we would assuredly have to confine ourselves to that situation, while still agreeing that murder is always a bad thing, as well as a sin in God's eyes.

So we must keep in mind that an end never justifies a means in the sense of making a means good on an absolute scale. Perhaps an end justifies a lesser evil over a greater evil, but by no means does an end make what would ordinarily be a bad means a good thing of itself.

So perhaps another question that might be asked: is morality an absolute thing? Is murder absolutely bad? Perhaps morality is merely obedience to God and God's will in a given situation? If that is the case, then we needn't be worried about doing something "bad" to prevent something worse, because as long as we're doing something for the greater good, then it is in fact absolutely good. This presents us with two ways of looking at the moral quality of an action. Either it is absolutely good or absolutely bad, or its morality is defined by whether or not it is helping the greater good.

Ok. Wow. I want to stop here a minute… I've written all this over the course of like three sittings, and I feel like somehow I'm getting really disjointed and lost in metaphysical sophistry. So… maybe I'm kind of becoming impractical here. Does this really have anything to do with practical… well… anything?

Irrelevant Parenthetical note… you can skip this if you want… it's a little off-topic

(If you haven't noticed alreay, I ask a lot of questions in my posts, and I ask them like I don't know the answer. Then I go on to give an answer to the question. That seems a bit contradictory, I guess. If it helps you understand my blog post style a little, the way I do this is I begin by asking real questions that I have, and proceed to think about them as I write. So essentially I'm coming up with answers as I write. This is, in fact (haha, ok, I'm realizing I way overkill the phrase 'in fact'… just so you know that I know), one of the reasons I like to write, because it opens new trains of thoughts and helps me to nail down what I actually think. But when I ask a question and the proceed to give an answer, don't assume that I'm going to die by my answer. I reserve the full right to recant of anything I say on this blog. Furthermore, the most recent post overrides the authority of any previous posts. So if I contradict myself, the newer post holds precedence. Just a house keeping note for future reference.)

So back to my question. Am I getting all caught up in vain arguments about words and terms? Does all this ends justifying means actually mean anything in terms of the practical outworking of Christianity? I guess the entire reason I brought this up was because it's been a question that's been weighing hard on my mind of late. It really is a hard question, I think. And one that should be thought about. IS it really ok to do something bad to prevent something worse? Is it a good thing to do? Is it the right thing to do?