Assignment 2 - sfFSE PDF

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Torture, violence and inhuman treatment:

DIRTY HANDS

By Antonio Martín, Group 18

Introduction The aim of this work is to use the problem of dirty hands as a moral framework in order to develop a solid answer to why humans are sometimes willing to commit evil, even atrocities actions on behalf of a greater good, and more importantly, on the dangers of said course of action as a general rule. The dirty hands subtopic will contain answers to the following questions: • • •

Is this problem a contradiction? Does the overriding of moral constraint take place within morality? Does the problem only apply to politics?

•

Are the principal agents the only ones affected by the action?

The problem of the dirty hands The concern of the dirty hands issue is whether individuals occupying high responsibility positions can incur in gravely immoral actions so that a different moral good can be preserved or realized, constituting the overall action as morally acceptable. Were we to take a consequentialist point of view, then that’s it; the evil act is justified. On the other hand, a deontological interpretation would make the wicked act irreconcilable with good ethics. The main example is that of a political figure having to torture a subject in order to prevent an impending catastrophe. It could be argued that the mere enunciation of the dirty hands problem is a contradiction, but I highly disagree with that. A morally deplorable action can pursue a positive consequence ant it wouldn’t be incongruent to ask if the moral operation overall is acceptable; The evil means coexist with the good end. Both the good and the bad take place within the same action without purging one another, and I see no contradiction in asking whether the bad act was tolerable. I believe the overriding of the ethical constraints may sometimes be within morality only if: •

The torturer is directly pursuing a morally just consequence.

•

The torture does not take joy in the evil action and recognizes it as a fiendish act.

It would not make sense to declare the evil act as morally good if, for example, the political figure exerts torture upon a victim in pursue of selfish ends, but accidentally out of that torture information that could save the life of hundreds of innocent people is obtained. The main goal of the active subject must be the just end in spite of the bad one. Of course, here lies the major difficulty of determining if the pursued good is actually that, and not some wicked preference. Even under the aforementioned conditions the key here is determining the morality of the end and balancing it against the cruel act. For that, I would ask the questions: • Is the good end really just? •

Does the evil act cause an excess of cruel, unnecessary suffering that could eclipse the “fairness” of the previous action?

A good example I can think of is using violence for personal self-defense: Protecting your physical integrity seems like a fair cause, and although in order to preserving it an attacker receives physical damage, violence was necessary to protect the good end. So as a rule of thumb, the overriding of ethical constrains take place within morality if • The overriding is necessary to preserve the end •

The end is deontologically good.

Obviously, this problem is not just applicable to complex political circumstances. It applies to many contexts and ranges within several levels of relevancy. Scenarios such as violently confronting someone to prevent a rape, stomping to death an endangered venomous snake that was about to attack a child, or cheating on a test with the aim of achieving better grades fit quite nicely within the structure of the dirty hands dilemma. Let us assume that a police officer tortured a suspicious individual, got information out of him and prevented a terrorist attack on a shopping mall. The consequences of his actions are not merely the evident ones, but also have an indirect effect on society. First, many would get the impression that breaking moral and legal rules is adequate if in pursue of a good end, even if that sometimes means violating the integrity of other human beings. This devaluates human dignity and could have unwanted consequences and societal customs may enable violence as a tool to achieve ends.

Conclusion One must not be too lax with the ethical interpretations of the dirty hands dilemma because that could potentially feed the discourse of “the end justifies the means”. This way of thinking does not only present a menace for individual conduct, but also for whole human groups. Through the dilemma we could explain why some people are willing to do things they despise or consider evil in pursue of a greater good such as national identities, ideologies or religions. People know good things often require sacrifice, which makes us vulnerable to being taken advantage of, and it deeply interests me is how often is this logic has been used to manipulate whole societies. In fact, the first thing that came to mind when I read about the dirty hands problem was; “Well, that argument may be used to justify terrible things”. I then remembered some of the testimonies I read from the Japanese soldiers attached to “Unit 731” during WW2. The members of the unit did not necessarily enjoy or believe human experimentation was ethically adequate, but that seemed like a small price to pay if that meant serving the Japanese Empire. At the same time, I believe the evil part of the dilemma can be justified in such rare cases, specially when it is a matter of self-defense, when the protected good clearly outweighs the bad action, and said action is carried out without a desire for cruelty....