Imagine you discover one of your close friends has been falsely embellishing his academic achievements, claiming he has several graduate degrees. You are concerned about him and want to confirm the truth. When you gracefully approach him with your curiosity, your friend denies the accusation. Instead of giving counter arguments to prove his claims, he only rejects yours. Time has passed and you are no longer close friends. Recently you discover he is now engaged to a woman you know. With mutual friends connecting you and the woman, you ponder on what action you should take next. As much as you don’t want to associate with this man again, you adopt his fiancée’s perspective. If you were the man’s fiancée, you feel …show more content…
The woman would eventually marry this deceitful man and then more possibilities would arise. The woman might be married to a man who could instantly lose his job if his employers were to find out and then not only would the man suffer, but the woman too. Would the person feel bad for not intervening and possibly saving them from this financial loss? What if the man wasn’t just lying about his education and the woman is now married to man who has lied to her their entire relationship. Would the person feel guilty knowing they could’ve saved her from marrying a man she didn’t
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fully know? Maybe the woman marries the man and someone else finds out about his lies, and eventually the woman’s credibility is also questioned because they believe she must be supporting his fraud. Would the sender wish they would’ve warned the woman so she could decide for herself if she wanted to be associated with this man’s actions?
There are numerous amounts of scenarios the sender has to contemplate over, knowing that whichever decision they make, will indeed have specific effects on the woman, the man, and themselves. When referring to consequentialist theory, the morally right decision supported would be to tell the woman. However, there are other theories that can be applied to this situation, to conclude which action is most morally right. Another moral theory that can be utilized to support telling the secret to the …show more content…
Therefore, they judge the action’s “nature” and decide whether or not the act is morally sound (102). Immanuel Kant, a well-known philosopher in the deontologist category, has a theory one could use to debate what action is morally right in this particular case. According to Kant’s theory, “all our duties, all the moral categorical imperatives, (what we should do in all situations, regardless of our wants and needs) can be logically derived from the categorical imperative” (103). When applying the categorical imperative, there are two versions needed to consider. Kant lists two criteria that scale the first version of the categorical imperative. The first: “if everyone can consistently act on the maxim (general rule) in similar situations (103). The second: “you would be willing to let that happen” (103). In Kant’s reasoning, if you are willingly accept the action as universal for all to follow, it must be morally permissible. The second version to the categorical imperative is applying the rule of the “means-end principle”. The means- end principle states that we need to treat people (including ourselves) as individuals who have “intrinsic worth” rather than “tools” others can use for their own personal gain