Ethical Dilemmas In Hypothetical Situation, By Joseph Nye

In this brief excerpt from Joseph Nye's, Hypothetical Situation, we see a very unethical action soon to take place just as we intervene. A local military officer is detected about to execute three villagers for the death of one officer who was shot the night prior. We intervene and we are given the choice to shoot one villager to save two. A quick glance at this and you experience a sense of a philosophical dilemma. There are various ways to go about solving this dilemma and each one of them has its benefits and risks. Standing behind ethical values such as respect, empathy, compassion, responsibility, and justice. I construct my solution in order to perform the right action.
I assume the role of responsibility for life and death in this situation. …show more content…
I believe that in a job where you are responsible for objectives to be met, given by your commanding officer, you are in a position with little to no room to choose the right thing to do. The officer is met with the dilemma of whether to follow his commanding officer and betraying his platoon or to execute his job and obey the commands. A different approach to this dilemma is through the eyes of a blind officer who is following an unjust and corrupt authority. We can recall back to world war two where members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party were led by an unjust leader which resulted in a war between …show more content…
After being given the gun you obtain the position of authority. A symbolic transfer of control from the military officer in charge to a passing witness. The gun is a symbol of authority and not to be used as a means to an end. As a result of responsibility for what comes next, you have nothing but freedom to do what you please. I would, therefore, engage and negotiate a way to avoid killing the villagers. A promising solution to this dilemma is to find the real criminal to this crime. Looking back at the excerpt you start to recognize that the only individuals that could have shot the officer would be other individuals with firearms. You read the excerpt and the only characters with guns being shown are the officers. I conclude that the criminal is not within the villagers but amongst the officers themselves. The officer also dies at night meaning there is a possibility he was murdered in his sleep. To elaborate military officers also tend to sleep at their local base. To further prove my case, we notice the irresponsibility of the local military of handing a gun to a passing stranger. There is no way to find this out for sure due to the constraints and lack of information given however we can infer that the officer was shot by another individual with a gun. All military personnel carry firearms and therefore is more likely for the criminal to be amongst the military