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Thomson’s Violinist Analysis
When people come into this world, they are given the right to do what they want with their life. No one can tell them how to live, it is simply their right to decide on what to do with it. In every choice, an individual will encounter in their lifetime, their background and moral principles will most likely help them make that decision. People will rely on their own opinions and judgements to make the difficult decisions that come along in life, not their friends nor their family can make those decisions for them. In the analysis of Thomson’s Violinist, the protagonist must make one of those difficult decisions, whether human rights or human existence is more valuable in making a controversial choice.
In the scenario called, “Thomson’s Violinist” by Daniel Sokol, the author comes up with a very controversial situation that forces people to make life or death decisions based on their beliefs. In this scenario, a person is kidnapped by the Music Appreciation Society to save the life of a famous maestro.
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The protagonist being kidnapped will worry his family, they do not know what happened to him or where he is. In the worst case scenario, they could even think he is dead and is gone forever. The protagonist is affected because he has to decide whether to stay or to leave and if he does stay it could cause some harm to him. Next, the maestro is affected because the protagonist has the his life in his hands and he has no idea if he will live to see another day. Finally, the music society will be affected because they may lose a popular violinist, whose music has had a huge impact on society, as they may never hear anything as beautiful as the maestro’s music ever again. There are pros and cons to whatever decision the protagonist decides to make, but he still must think about his rights to choose what he
According to Thomson, unjust killing comes from the result of depriving someone from a right that they own. In the Henry Fonda case, Fonda was given the magical ability to cure a sickness with just one touch over a fevered brow. So, Fonda has the right to volunteer in touching the fevered brow, but is not obligated to do so because the sick person does not own the right of Henry Fonda’s hand. This analogy is very significant in comparison to Thomson’s argument on justified abortion because it shows that the mother should not be held to any constraints because she has the freedom to her body. Given the fact that the mother has the authority to make any decisions she wants; abortion will always be justified because she is not obligated to give
Judith Jarvis Thomson, in "A Defense of Abortion", argues that even if we grant that fetuses have a fundamental right to life, in many cases the rights of the mother override the rights of a fetus. For the sake of argument, Thomson grants the initial contention that the fetus has a right to life at the moment of conception. However, Thomson explains, it is not self-evident that the fetus's right to life will always outweigh the mother's right to determine what goes on in her body. Thomson also contends that just because a woman voluntarily had intercourse, it does not follow that the fetus acquires special rights against the mother. Therefore, abortion is permissible even if the mother knows the risks of having sex. She makes her points with the following illustration. Imagine that you wake up one morning and find that you have been kidnapped, taken to a hospital, and a famous violist has been attached to your circulatory system. You are told that the violinist was ill and you were selected to be the host, in which the violinist will recover in nine months, but will die if disconnected from you before then. Clearly, Thomson argues, you are not morally required to continue being the host. In her essay she answers the question: what is the standard one has to have in order to be granted a right to life? She reflects on two prospects whether the right to life is being given the bare minimum to sustain life or ir the right to life is merely the right not to be killed. Thomson states that if the violinist has more of a right to life then you do, then someone should make you stay hooked up to the violinist with no exceptions. If not, then you should be free to go at a...
In the Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper, “A Defense of Abortion”, the author argues that even though the fetus has a right to life, there are morally permissible reasons to have an abortion. Of course there are impermissible reasons to have an abortion, but she points out her reasoning why an abortion would be morally permissible. She believes that a woman should have control of her body and what is inside of her body. A person and a fetus’ right to life have a strong role in whether an abortion would be okay. Thomson continuously uses the story of a violinist to get the reader to understand her point of view.
The Bystander at the Switch case is a fundamental part of Thomson’s argument in “Trolley Problem.” The basis of her paper is to explain the moral difference between this case, which she deems morally permissible (1398), and the Transplant case, which she deems morally impermissible (1396). In the Bystander at the Switch case, a bystander sees a trolley hurtling towards five workers on the track and has the option of throwing a switch to divert the trolley’s path towards only one worker. Thomson finds the Bystander at the Switch case permissible under two conditions:
...main for that hour – that it would be indecent in her to refuse” (page 119). My problem with this scenario is that she leaves it unfinished. What happens to the child that is then born? If pregnancy only lasted an hour, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s the part after that (which is taking care of a child) that lasts the rest of your life and is most important. I also feel that Thompson makes assumptions, which make it easier for her to argue her points. In her first argument about the violinist, she says “I would imagine you would regard this as outrageous…” (Page 114). How does she know what people would “imagine?” It seems very arrogant of her to assume that people reading her article would automatically agree with her opinions. I think that the article focuses too much on why the Pro-Life ideas are wrong, instead of why Pro –Choice is right.
In the article 'A Defense of Abortion' Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. In this paper I will give a fairly detailed description of Thomson main arguments for abortion. In particular I will take a close look at her famous 'violinist' argument. Following will be objections to the argumentative story focused on the reasoning that one person's right to life outweighs another person's right to autonomy. Then appropriate responses to these objections. Concluding the paper I will argue that Thomson's 'violinist' argument supporting the idea of a mother's right to autonomy outweighing a fetus' right to life does not make abortion permissible.
...ter on Hamlet, in his soliloquy, is frustrated at how actors can freely express their emotions without fear. However, his goal of vengeance has taken over all other aspects in his life and therefore, he willingly sacrifices his freedom of expression.
I want to use the modified example of Judith Thomson’s violinist to make Marquis cannot solve his argument. There is a famous unconscious violinist, who has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment and have a special blood. The Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help.And then, they have kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital tells you that we are sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you! we would never have permitted it if we had known. But now, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you.To unplug and cannot find this special blood, which is only 0.01% of the people in the world having it in these two days, he will die. However, if you wait a nine months, he can fully recover. And then, can you use nine months to help him? You even do not who he is and have not do anything to hurt him. The patient’s right of the FLO does not automatically translate into your duty to preserve his FLO. We can see an abortion as a patient. The supporter of abortion might say a fetus’s right to life does not entail its right to use someone else’s body to preserve its life. This implies the woman has no duty to preserve the FLO of the fetus. However, an opponent of abortion might point out a woman’s right to use her own body does not entail her right to end someone else’ life in order to do what she wants with her body. This implies the woman has the duty over the loss of FLO of the fetus. We should more care the right of a fetus. Two sides explain their argument clearly.This a stand-off result. That is why we cannot know which one is correct: the fetus’s right of FLO and the woman’s duty to preserve the fetus’ FLO. It is unclear to define
Growing up within a household full of women, writer Kate Chopin could attest to the extreme difference it is to be considered independent vs dependent, as a woman. Accordingly, a theme of feminism and independence was apparent within her writings. However, in her short story, Desiree’s baby, she chooses to do something different. Instead of using independence as a theme, in the favor of women, Kate Chopin greets readers with a socioeconomic difference between main characters, Desiree and Armand. When considering this short story, with the Marxist criticism, a reader may even notice that Kate Chopin’s characters demonstrate economical differences (i.e. class and status) to overall argue how ones social status and economic class leads to mental illness of the lowly and the elite.
Thompson’s theses are strengthened by both hypothetical and real life examples. She begins by granting that fetuses become people from the moment of conception and therefore have rights. Thompson employs this strategy to disparage the traditional argument so that we can cultivate a deeper analysis on the permissibility of abortion. The first analogy Thomson applies is one where you are drugged; a famous violinist is attached to you and he must use your kidneys for nine months in order to live. This situation cultivates the question of whether or not you are allowed to unplug from the violinist. If a person were to acce...
John Tasioulas introduces the idea that human rights are explained by the morals that humans possess through understanding of human dignity. He explains that are three connections that human dignity has to human rights. The first connection presented is that human dignity and rights are rarely distinguished between due to having virtually the same standards in regards to them. The second that dignity is a starting point in moral grounds that human rights build off of. And last, that the idea that human rights are justified by dignity, saying dignity is the ideal basis for human rights. Tasioulas chooses to focus on the last point, that it is our morals that bring about human rights and that our morals come from humans having dignity. The key thing being that human dignity is something that all possess by simply being human beings there is no merit in achievement or by what legislation or social position can give us.
Throughout Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion there are multiple points that analyze and evaluate different perceptions and arguments of a concept that oppose abortion based on the premise that a fetus is considered a person from the moment of conception. These distinct points are all expressed through scenarios of thought experiments such as, the violinist, Henry Fonda, and people-seeds. Within the violinist thought experiment, Thomson utilizes a situation in which an individual is kidnapped and plugged into a violinist’s circulatory system without consent to extract poisons from the blood of both people. From this setup, the argument becomes apparent that even though an individual has the right to the decisions within their body such as the
With the violinist, Thomson attempts to compare the thought process behind an abortion to a violinist receiving a kidney, with a kidnapped person forcibly donating the kidney. Similarly, a person who is pregnant may or may not be 'taken hostage' and forced, in whatever way, to become pregnant, and the idea of 'saving a life' in either the violinists or the pregnant person's case becomes blurry because of the other life being endangered in the process. The point being that the argument boils down to if a life can be saved, anyone else involved in the process of saving the life may not make a decision harming the failing or fledgling life, regardless of situation. The second argument of Henry Fonda suggests that though one thing may provide an
Adams’s unwanted pregnancy, I will use their arguments to see if her decision to have an abortion is morally justified. Through Thomson’s use of the violinist analogy and burglar and people-seeds analogy, I will show that Mrs. Adams’s abortion is morally justified because Mrs. Adams got pregnant despite the use of contraception; showing that the fetus’s right to life and its potential is not equal to the use of her body since she did not consent to the fetus’s use of her body.
Thompson, a pioneer on the moderate side, suggests that abortion is in fact sometimes morally permissible. Her main goal was to not only argue for abortions permissibility, but to challenge some of the common arguments presented for the impermissibility of abortion. Explaining her goals, she argues that a fetus has a right to life. But the question is what does it mean to have the right to life? Well, in some cases, a right solely means entitlement and in other cases, it means a certain kind of claim that one has against another. Thomson presents that the right to life does not mean it is the right to have the bare minimum needed for survival. Presenting the famous violinist case, she explains the storyline of a person who wakes up and is attached to a famous violinist. If the individual decides to detach him or herself, the violinist dies unless they stay attached for several months to save him. This case symbolizes the correlation between abortion and rape. Meaning, having an abortion, like detaching from the violinist, is morally permissible in cases where the pregnancy is not wanted. Her argument, using the case, claims that abortion in the case of rape is in fact morally permissible. With is then clear that Thomson rejects that the fetus’s right to life outweighing the mothers right to decide what she wants. In other cases, abortion is an unjust killing. However, she does note her argument may not be satisfactory to all proponents of the moral permissibility of