Once upon a time, there was a boy who was born into a family of simple tailors in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa. The boy’s father wanted him to continue the family business, but the boy wanted a better life and one night decided to leave his home and go to Europe. To cross the sea the boy built himself a raft.
But once he left the shore, there was only a little wind and it didn’t take long for his supplies to run out. And there he was: hungry, and lonely, floating in the middle of the mediterranean sea. Imagine you live on the coast of Southern Europe and one morning, read about the boy's fate in a local paper.
Should you yourself try to save him? Four influential philosophers — Aristotle, Mill, Kant, and Nietzsche — can help us answer this, and other difficult moral questions with their respective theories. Virtue theorists like Aristotle ask: how to live a good life?
The best life, according to him, is the life of someone who demonstrates excellence in aspects of a virtuous character: the capacities for emotion, theoretical ideas, and practical wisdom. Aristotle would argue that if helping the boy is a manifestation of a personality that’s virtuous, then you should save him because being a person of good character is what matters. What that exactly means, differs for every one of us.
If you are rich and powerful, saving the boy could be easy. It might still be the right thing to do, but it doesn’t reveal much of your personality, and hence isn’t particularly virtuous. If you have little to no means, your decision to save the boy is much harder.
If you still try to do so, then this truly reveals character, is virtuous, and is something you probably should try doing. Utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill, ask which action increases well-being for most people? So when faced with a choice they do what seems most beneficial to most people as if they could calculate what consequences lead to the highest net happiness.
When thinking about saving the boy's life, you should consider all the happiness the boy and his family get, the joy it may bring you, and the benefits for society now and for generations to come. This you then compare with what else you could be doing — known as your opportunity costs. For example, instead of risking your life at sea, you could work the day in a coffee shop, and donate the money you made to an effective charity which then saves two kids from starvation somewhere else.
Comparing the two options, you decide not to save the boy, but instead work, donate and double the total potential well-being of humanity. Some call this effective altruism. Deontologists like Immanuel Kant, focus on the 'intent' rather than consequences.
They believe in universal moral laws, such as “Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't cheat.
” The golden rule is the so-called categorical imperative: our decisions are then morally right when they can become a rule everyone else should follow. If you help the boy, because it makes you look good, your intentions are wrong because you treat him as a means to an end and we don’t want to live in a world in which false heroism is a universal moral norm. If you save the boy, because you want to live in a world in which helping those in need is always the right thing, then you should do that.
You should even do so if you have reason to believe that the kid may end up taking advantage of your kindness. Friedrich Nietzsche would ask what’s in your own interest? He argued that self-interested behavior is morally right as it makes us stronger.
And if we are stronger, so is society. Acting against your own interest is immoral because it hinders this development. So if you want to help the boy, because you think that is good for you, do it.
Help the boy. But if you think saving the boy could hurt you, don’t. It’s not your responsibility to save those who are too weak to help themselves.
So what do you think? Did any of the four help you with that decision? If not, here is one more idea.
Scholar Moshe Koppel made the interesting observation that Utilitarians and Kantians don’t use their own moral principles when trying to falsify each other’s theories. Both rather appeal to a feeling — as if we all, inside us, actually know what’s right and what’s wrong. Kantians would say: you don’t want to live in a world in which children die in the open, because you decided to save two strangers instead.
Such behavior just doesn't feel right. Correct? Utilitarians would counter: surely you wouldn’t want to save, say, a psychopath from drowning who’d then go ahead to kill you and your family, just because helping people is always right by principle?
That just feels wrong. Right? So now tell us, would you save the boy?
And why? Is your decision based on the character you strive to become, an analysis of costs and benefits, behavior we want to see in the world, for your own self-interest, or does it maybe just feel right? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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