Commandement 6, article 13

Introduction
One major part of a person’s political philosophy is their view on murder and how it is defined. The Bible makes it seem pretty simple: Thou shalt not kill. However, throughout the years, this simple maxim has been challenged by one ambiguous example after another. Is abortion murder? Is capital punishment murder? In order to help you think through your feelings on death and responsibility, I encourage you to work your way through the following exercise....


Exercise
Each of the following examples presents one case in which a person dies. Please read each example and apply one of the following three responses:
A. This is immoral, and I am responsible.
B. This is immoral, but I am not personally responsible.
C. This is just the way the world works, and while it is sad, no one is personally responsible.


Example 1: You shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Example 2: You come home to find your spouse in bed with another person, and, in a fit of rage, grab a gun and kill them both.

Example 3: A person breaks into your house. You grab a gun, and shoot him as he is fleeing out the front door.

Example 4: You are mugged in a back alley, but manage to wrestle the attackers knife from him and kill the man with it.

Example 5: You forget to use contraception, and as a result you/your girlfriend gets pregnant. Raising a child does not fit with your life plan for the moment, and you have an abortion.

Example 6: You are a soldier in the army. You kill a soldier in an enemy army.

Example 7: You are a pilot in the Air Force. You are given a target upon which to drop your bombs. You ask no questions and complete the mission, but later learn that the target was mis-identified and was actually a school.

Example 8: You are a judge in Texas, and you are presiding over the case of a serial murderer. It’s your call whether he is executed or spends his life in jail, and you elect to execute the man.

Example 9: In a prenatal screening within the first trimester of pregnancy, you learn that your child will have Downs syndrome. You elect to have an abortion.

Example 10: You are a doctor. Your emergency room is suddenly flooded with patients, and you ignore several critical patients who will probably die regardless of treatment in order to tend to several other patients who you have a better chance to save.

Example 11: You are the head of a household, and you find yourself in this situation: you have limited resources and money, and can either pay for an expensive treatment that will keep an 85-old relative alive for another year, or for two treatments that will significantly improve the quality of life of two teenage relatives.

Example 12: Your spouse suffers a car accident and loses brain function. After several months on the respirator, you elect to pull the plug.

Example 13: A child dies in Africa from malnutrition. You were aware that this is going on and had the money to donate to the charity that could save this child, but you elected to purchase Netflix instead.



If you feel comfortable posting your results, please do. I a interested to know where other people fall on the spectrum.





Sorry for the recent scarcity of updates. It turns out that school is more time consuming than I’d remembered. To sate your appetite for semi-coherent bloggerel, I recommend: pedagogue-blog.blogspot.com, an account of one young man’s trials and tribulations as a fresh-out-of-college music teacher in a New York City charter school.

Saddam and Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was a seventeenth century philosopher who lives on as a scapegoat in many an Introduction to Philosophy class. Hobbes believed that without authority humans live "short, nasty, and brutish" lives. Therefore, he thought that a powerful central government was necessary for a stable and peaceful state. To most idealistic young students, myself included, this violates the notions that a government should be derived from the will of the population, and that a central authority should have only limited power over the lives of its subjects.

However, if you wanted to make a case to vindicate Hobbes, a terrific example exists in Iraq. Iraq was controlled by an extremely powerful tyrant who ruled with an iron fist and brutally suppressed dissent. This method of government held together three societies that hate each other for over a decade, even in the face of international sanctions and extreme pressure. As soon as Saddam Hussein, the Hobbesian totalitarian ruler, was removed, the society exploded into violence. Democracy and foreign influence have been unable to contain the turmoil, and life in Iraq has indeed become "short, nasty, and brutish."

While I'll probably never count myself a Hobbes disciple, this is certainly one example of a situation in which it would appear that the one solution an otherwise untenable situation was the supreme authority figure that Hobbes envisioned.

Quick Disclaimer: Please don't misread me to be saying that brutal tyranny is an acceptable form of government. My point is that a system in which I vehemently oppose finally and ironically has a case to support it.