Is Killing Morally Impermissible? - Desklib

This essay explores the ethical considerations of killing someone in different ethical frameworks such as Virtue ethics, Kantian Deontology, and Utilitarianism theory. It concludes that killing someone is morally impermissible under any circumstances.

psychology
“Is killing morally permissible?”
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Abstract: The below mentioned essay include the comments related to the topic “Is killing
morally permissible?”
The many must be saved
Obviously, killing people has never been rational or ideal and if in case, there comes the situation
of killing anyone, it must be the last option and it is very necessary to reduce the loss of life as
far as possible. For such circumstances, if a single person’s death saves the life of other, it is
permissible to do so when there are no options to save those life (Crockett, 2013).
The question is already shown in the abstract but it is very obvious that one will not have any
choices from the abstract. No one can ever know for sure that the actions to kill someone with a
faith to save the life of many will be fruitful. In such circumstances, all a person will know is
whether or not, she/he will pick to do is kill someone. Do not do bad in the faith that good will
come. What one should do is do your best and refrain from murder. God individually will pick or
save or kill any other people who is involved in doing so (Christians, Richardson, Fackler,
Kreshel and Woods, 2015).
For the better Good
On the place of the better good, surrendering one will be ethically greater to surrendering many.
Can one live with the guilt throughout his whole life? Is it morally right to murder an innocent to
save the number of innocent people? Or is it morally right to sacrifice many innocent to save the
life of one individual? (Paxton, Ungar and Greene, 2012).
If one evaluates the consequences on a distant balance, saving an individual versus saving many,
it is but obvious ethically greater to pick the second option. But if evaluating morally, none of
the options are best because at the end you will end up killing someone. Killing someone is
absolutely impermissible no matter what the circumstances takes place. Thus, “morally
permissible” encounters in the ethical ideas of the majority of the people (Cushman, Young and
Greene, 2010). If only looking at the results of the situation, will the majority be incapable to or
eager to sacrifice one? Can they take the responsibility of that one life which has been killed just
with the hope of saving the life of many? Until and unless the circumstances gets really tough
and honestly desperate, the common nature of human beings will only allow the former. Which

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is why not everyone can actually understand the decisions that has been made (Hoffman,
Frederick and Schwartz, 2014).
Being totally dependent on the actual meaning of murder, it might go from that of trivial to quite
complex to defend. If murder is considered as immoral, then it is an obvious unimportant and
vague thing. If it is against law to kill someone, then one must be open to the causes and effects
that it might be ethical to murder someone unlawfully particularly if there exists bad laws. For an
instance, let us prove that some murders are ethically wrong no matter what the circumstances
are. It is not much of a pressure: majority of people have a thought that some murders can easily
be justifies and all that is important is explaining why few of them are incorrect or why killing
someone is prima facie incorrect (Tobia, Buckwalter and Stich, 2013).
Taking the basic theory i.e. Utilitarianism
Happiness must be optimized. Well, not tough to visualize how few murders are ethically
incorrect. Few murders can create more pain than creating pleasure and enjoyment. In fact, it
might be stated that killing people is Prima facie incorrect, just because it is quite obvious that
generally killing create severe pain as compared to the pleasure that is felt while saving
someone’s life. In case of animals, numerous utilitarian’s state that murdering animals is
incorrect, however, it can be fun and pain as well. Consequently, many people complement that
animals naturally have lower fun and pains (Slote, 2010). This simply mean that it is prima facie
incorrect to murder animals but that it will be quite simple to validate killing the one, say just
because one need food to eat, and the fun is taken by killing the one and the pain that they cause
seems to be very low as compared to the fun that one gets by eating them. Killing them seems to
be fun when one becomes so desperate to eat them.
Taking another basic theory i.e. Kantian Deontology
The tentative imperative is the base necessity on how one must act to be ethical. There are large
number of formulations of Kant’s tentative imperative, but the most important one is the second
number. "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person
of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end." Killing,
just because it defeats the opportunity of the other individual to meet their own objectives that
has been set by them to lead a successful life. Human being are rational and they must be

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appreciated and they must have the quest of their individual ends appreciated (Slim, 2010). Kant
will refuse that animals are also considered to be rational and which state that animals are not
supposed to deserve ethical consideration. But this really does not state that one can kill animals
because there can be something great instead of intrinsic value of rationality such as instrumental
importance. Thus, this clearly state that killing human beings is morally unethical while killing
animals is possible allowed (Pizarro and Tannenbaum, 2011).
The last ethics which can be applied is Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics majorly keeps a focus on the specific traits of characters which are generally found
between two major extremes. Cowardice is a rough trait of character, thus it is rashness but
audacity- the suitable balance that takes place between cowardice and rashness- is an asset
(Kagan, 2018). There are huge number of virtues and one must act in ways which embody those
assets. The murders which are totally justifies are those which do not go against those assets:
safeguarding the family members from bandits, possibly. On the contrary, murdering one’s boss
just because of jealousy and envy do not symbolize virtues. However, majority of murders are
not purely honorable, and it can be stated that killing is generally unethical (Abarbanell and
Hauser, 2010).
Killing someone is not morally ethical at any cost. Although, when it comes to doing well to
someone and killing one for doing so, it is not at all acceptable. The point is doing well for one is
not morally ethical by killing another because ultimately, you will end up losing a life which is
totally wrong. Not in case of only human, killing animals just for fun or anything else is also
equally wrong. There are numerous murderers who can easily justify themselves in order to kill
someone but those justification should not be at all considered. Moreover, there must be tied
knot that killing is morally unethical at any cost no matter what.
Thus, this is a try to answer the question from three major points of views i.e. Virtue ethics,
Kantian Deontology and Utilitarianism theory which also covers the prime ethical frameworks.
However, from the above essay it can easily be concluded that killing someone at any
circumstances is unethical (Navarrete, McDonald, Mott and Asher, 2012). No matter what the
situation is or no matter it may save the life of other many, killing one for the sake of many is
totally wrong because one is not sure about the effects of killing one to saving many is fruitful or
not. This might not be a good idea or a thought to kill someone just to save others.

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References
Abarbanell, L. and Hauser, M.D., 2010. Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible
harms. Cognition, 115(2), pp.207-224.
Christians, C.G., Richardson, K.B., Fackler, M., Kreshel, P. and Woods, R.H., 2015. Media
Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, Course Smart textbook
Crockett, M.J., 2013. Models of morality. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(8), pp.363-366.
Cushman, F., Young, L. and Greene, J.D., 2010. Our multi-system moral psychology: Towards a
consensus view. The Oxford handbook of moral psychology, pp.47-71.
Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014. Business ethics: Readings and
cases in corporate morality. John Wiley & Sons.
Kagan, S., 2018. Normative ethics. Routledge.
Navarrete, C.D., McDonald, M.M., Mott, M.L. and Asher, B., 2012. Virtual morality: Emotion
and action in a simulated three-dimensional “trolley problem”. Emotion, 12(2), p.364.
Paxton, J.M., Ungar, L. and Greene, J.D., 2012. Reflection and reasoning in moral
judgment. Cognitive Science, 36(1), pp.163-177.
Pizarro, D.A. and Tannenbaum, D., 2011. Bringing character back: How the motivation to
evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame. The social psychology of morality:
Exploring the causes of good and evil, pp.91-108.
Slim, H., 2010. Killing civilians: method, madness and morality in war. C Hurst Publishers
Limited.
Slote, M., 2010. Virtue ethics. In The Routledge companion to ethics (pp. 504-515). Routledge.
Tobia, K., Buckwalter, W. and Stich, S., 2013. Moral intuitions: Are philosophers
experts. Philosophical Psychology, 26(5), pp.629-638.