Trying to determine what the right thing to do in a situation may lead to an abysmal void. Michael Sandel, a professor of justice at Harvard, poses his students with many controversial situations that spark different arguments and questions. Along with the situations, he introduces philosophies and moral principles that back up the contrasting perspectives. One of the first things that Sandel presents is consequential and categorical moral reasoning. While a consequential reasoning focuses on morality in the outcome, a categorical reasoning finds it through the actions and the rights. With these reasonings, people can choose what seems to be the right thing to do in the examples that Sandel presents. Some of the questions that were sparked
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This concept is also known as utilitarianism, a moral theory created by Jeremy Bentham. It may seem ideal to pick something that will maximize satisfaction; however, this can be contradicted easily. This idea emerges in the situation that Sandel presents, where four people were stranded at sea and all of them were hungry for food. Coincidentally enough, the cabin boy, the youngest of them, had turned sick due to drinking the salt water, and was almost to the point of death. Later in the story, the captain ends up killing the boy and the other crew members join in to eat him as well. At the end, Bentham’s concept of maximizing the overall welfare was achieved, it was still immoral that the crew at sea turned to cannibalism to support themselves. The crew members had ignored the individual rights of the cabin boy. Not only that, but the murder trial could have been avoided if they had never killed the boy in the first place. It was obvious that the boy wasn’t going to survive as long as the other crew mates, so if they had waited for him to die before using him, they wouldn’t have violated his unalienable right to life. This is one situation that Sandel presents in order to demonstrate Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism and show how outcomes do not always justify actions of taking away someone’s
This concept is also known as utilitarianism, a moral theory created by Jeremy Bentham. It may seem ideal to pick something that will maximize satisfaction; however, this can be contradicted easily. This idea emerges in the situation that Sandel presents, where four people were stranded at sea and all of them were hungry for food. Coincidentally enough, the cabin boy, the youngest of them, had turned sick due to drinking the salt water, and was almost to the point of death. Later in the story, the captain ends up killing the boy and the other crew members join in to eat him as well. At the end, Bentham’s concept of maximizing the overall welfare was achieved, it was still immoral that the crew at sea turned to cannibalism to support themselves. The crew members had ignored the individual rights of the cabin boy. Not only that, but the murder trial could have been avoided if they had never killed the boy in the first place. It was obvious that the boy wasn’t going to survive as long as the other crew mates, so if they had waited for him to die before using him, they wouldn’t have violated his unalienable right to life. This is one situation that Sandel presents in order to demonstrate Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism and show how outcomes do not always justify actions of taking away someone’s