Sandel – Justice thread

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Again, in an effort to provide some more groundwork regarding the ethical philosophies (utilitarianism, virtue ethics, etc) . These ethical philosophies are based on essentially two basic moral principles or moral reasoning:

– Consequentialist – locates morality in the consequences of an act (ex. utilitarianism)

– Categorical – locates morality in certain absolute moral requirements or categorical duties and rights.

To help explain the above I have a great lecture video for you (it is captioned) by Michael Sandel is an excellent professor at Harvard. In his video, he said that,

Part 1 – The Moral Side of Murder: If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? Thats the hypothetical scenario Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning.

Part 2 – The Case for Cannibalism: Sandel introduces the principles of utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with a famous nineteenth-century law case involving a shipwrecked crew of four. After nineteen days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the cabin boy, the weakest amongst them, so they can feed on his blood and body to survive. Link: https://theopenacademy.com/content/lecture-1-moral-side-murder

REQUIRED:

First, I want you to give me some feedback on the Sandel lecture. What would you have done in each scenario and why. Keep that to about 100 to 150 words.