Ethical Theories Of Utilitarianism And Deontology

Although torturing the gentleman instantly comes across as the most ethical option, both the moral theories of Utilitarianism and Deontology assist in compacting our thoughts into seeing if this thought is truly the most ethical option.
Utilitarianism centers its ideal on if a person’s actions help the broadest amount of people. What we do to get to the biggest sum of the least amount of bad results is the goal, it does not matter how it happens, as long as it does. The theory does not take into consideration the individuals feelings, only the results of the whole. A good example of this theory is when I was assigned to choose if I would kill one healthy man to save the lives of 5 injured people in the hospital or not. At the end of the assignment, …show more content…
First, who all is involved? That would be the whole town, including the bomber and citizens. Now, who would be affected if the bombs went off? The whole town would be affected in some way. Does it matter how we protect the lives of the maximum, even if it hurt a minimum? Absolutely not. Finally, what could be done to protect the citizens, could torturing the man lead to their protection even if it is illegal? Yes, torturing the man seems to be completely ethical under the terms of Utilitarianism. This theory specifies what we should do based off of a case to case basis, sometimes it would benefit to torture a person, and sometimes not. Deontology is the complete opposite of Utilitarianism, it focuses one rules that do not change no matter the …show more content…
There is not a way that one is right and one is wrong. These theories are just different ways of looking at good or bad and right or wrong. What we need to do is look at this debacle through the lens of both things. Think about what is the right thing to do, also the consequences. Such as you can’t agree to always follow the code of conduct down to a tea. You must look at what the consequence of that is. For example, a nurse’s code of conduct says that they have to follow the law. For a nurse in Nazi Germany, the law said that they had to do some pretty horrible things to patients. Clearly, that would be unethical. Think about the consequences of following that rule would be. After thinking about the bombers and polices situation through the looking glass of both theories, I have concluded that I would be most ethical to torture the man. The law says it is illegal to do so, but the people will be saved, and if the man really does not want to be tortured then he would simply give up the information that he is keeping from the