Ethical Dilemmas In The Film M By Fritz Lang

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M, a film by Fritz Lang, is a thriller about a town working together to find a local child murderer named Hans Beckert. Much of the search and eventual capture of Beckert is due to the actions of the criminal underworld who’s actions had been disturbed by police searching for Beckert. The penultimate scene of this film sees Beckert captured and held trial by the criminals, where he exclaims that he cannot control himself nor his actions. This scene brings up many ethical questions, involving both the mentally ill as well as if Beckert should be considered guilty at all for actions that are outside of his control. Firstly, whether or not a person who cannot control their actions should be considered evil should be focused on so as to determine …show more content…

By killing children, Beckert is ignoring their desire to survive so as to reduce his pain, and the criminals by killing Beckert ignore his desire to survive so as to increase their pleasure. The use of other people as a means to an end goes against an important part about ethics. Many hedonistic philosophers have a caveat to their hedonism in that they do not think that your own personal and simple joy should come at the expense of others; Epicurus, in his Principal Doctrines states that “it is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly”, with emphasis on the “justly”. Epicurus’ hedonism says that we should only experience these simple pleasure when there can be justification behind experiencing them. For example, while the act of lying in bed all day may be a simple pleasure, there is no justification for ignoring obligations, including one’s own health. Mill’s version of utilitarian hedonism can be used as a counter-argument against the Cyrenaics’ hedonism by showing that while the pain of Beckert is momentarily ceased, the short time it is ceased is not equal to the pain caused to the children killed; Beckert would be happier for a while, but those children would have suffered more pain than that. Furthermore, killing Beckert would increase the

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