The Moral Side Of Murder Essay

Michael Sanders, a Professor at Harvard University, gave a lecture titled “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? The Moral Side of Murder” to nearly a thousand student’s in attendance. The lecture touched on two contrasting philosophies of morality. The first philosophy of morality discussed in the lecture is called Consequentialism. This is the view that "the consequences of one 's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.” (Consequentialism) This type of moral thinking became known as utilitarianism and was formulated by Jeremy Bentham who basically argues that the most moral thing to do is to bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people possible. The second

He presents a few hypothetical stories and one real one to get the students to think this question through. In one of the illustrations used the professor asks how many in the audience would actually push a “fat man” over a bridge onto the tracks below to stop a runaway trolley from killing five workers who were on the tracks in the way of the unstoppable trolley. I was surprised to see that a few hands actually went up. The argument of a student that had raised their hand in hypothetical agreement to pushing the man over the bridge, for the greater good, was that five other lives would be saved for the life of this one. Opposing views, of which whom I agreed with, were that by pushing the “fat man” over the bridge you were actually choosing and making a conscious decision to take a life; who are we to decide whose life is more valuable than

It does not matter if the greatest, or the least "good" would result from such an act. I hold to the belief that all human beings are intrinsically valuable. This is due to the fact that I, as a Christian, believe that all humans are created in the image of God. But before we go too far we must first accurately define our terms. Murder is always wrong, but it is not always wrong to kill. These two concepts are different. Part of the problem I had with the professor and his hypothetical stories was that he never even discussed the possibility that murder and killing were two different things. The fact is that even our judicial system makes such distinctions when they decide between, what is called murder and manslaughter. "Manslaughter is an unlawful killing that doesn’t involve malice aforethought—intent to seriously harm or kill, or extreme, reckless disregard for life. The absence of malice aforethought means that manslaughter involves less moral blame than either first or second degree murder.” (Berman) Murder on the other hand is defined as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.” (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. (Eleventh ed.).,