(no subject)
"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, your bayonet, your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony- Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?" -Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Writing this essay on justifying killing is difficult for me in a way I didn't anticipate. Have any of you guys experienced an instance where you had a clear position on some ethical dilemma, but articulating it in a higher level of detail made you reconsider it? I wouldn't say that I'm experiencing a terrible moral crisis here, and none of my positions have changed, but that is what's happening. It's partly because I've been describing the carnage of war; describing and researching the suffering incurred, without outside considerations, does make the justification part harder once you actually get to it. That can only be a good thing, imho, because I think if there's a flaw to philosophy it's that the human aspect of all the issues gets lost in the logic and theorizing. Besides, it is easy- way too easy- to dehumanize someone, especially if you've never met that someone, or if you think that someone has no right to live, or if you've bought into any one of thousands of justifications for killing. If killing is going to be justified, it shouldn't be because the killer was able to mentally put their victim on the level of an animal- or less than an animal.
I've also been doing a lot of research on different philosophical theories, such as pacifism, realism, and just war theory, which is fun but time consuming and headache inducing. ^^;;;
Writing this essay on justifying killing is difficult for me in a way I didn't anticipate. Have any of you guys experienced an instance where you had a clear position on some ethical dilemma, but articulating it in a higher level of detail made you reconsider it? I wouldn't say that I'm experiencing a terrible moral crisis here, and none of my positions have changed, but that is what's happening. It's partly because I've been describing the carnage of war; describing and researching the suffering incurred, without outside considerations, does make the justification part harder once you actually get to it. That can only be a good thing, imho, because I think if there's a flaw to philosophy it's that the human aspect of all the issues gets lost in the logic and theorizing. Besides, it is easy- way too easy- to dehumanize someone, especially if you've never met that someone, or if you think that someone has no right to live, or if you've bought into any one of thousands of justifications for killing. If killing is going to be justified, it shouldn't be because the killer was able to mentally put their victim on the level of an animal- or less than an animal.
I've also been doing a lot of research on different philosophical theories, such as pacifism, realism, and just war theory, which is fun but time consuming and headache inducing. ^^;;;