Ethics

[Johnny_L.A]

Here’s an Ethics scenario that comes up from time to time.

A German soldier in WWII is a good soldier. He loves his family, doesn’t drink, isn’t cruel, isn’t political, blahblahblah. But since he is a soldier, he is aiding and abetting a regime that everyone agrees is evil. By being a soldier, is his behaviour ethical?

I point out that the man has little choice but to fight. If he doesn’t, he’s likely to be executed for desertion, treason, or just as an example. If his choices are to be a soldier and try to survive the war, or be shipped off to a concentration camp, or to be executed, then what choice does he really have? The latter two choices solve nothing. ‘But he’s still fighting for the Evil side, therefore he is unethical.’

It seems to me that when you strip away the embellishment, the scenario comes down to this:
[ul][li]A given regime is Evil incarnate.[/li][li]Anyone who assists the evil regime, for any reason, is unethical.[/li][li]Is the soldier wrong to fight?[/ul][/li]In other words, ‘By definition, the soldier is wrong to fight. Question: Is the soldier wrong to fight?’

I point this out and say that the scenario and question are poorly formed, because the answer is defined at the outset. There can’t be any debate because debate has been forbidden. I’m wrong because I don’t accept that the answer is black-and-white, and that I insist on bringing in such things as human behaviour and self-preservation into a scenario that does not have those things presented in it. ‘Well, if you ever take an Ethics class, you’ll fail.’ Well, I find the scenario and the restrictions upon it to be unethical.

I think next time it comes up, I’ll set up my own scenario: There’s a Jew who is a good person. He loves his family, doesn’t drink, isn’t cruel, isn’t political, blahblahblah. He is captured by the Germans and made to work as slave labour in a weapons factory. Is he behaving ethically to do so?

[Absinthe_Anecdote]

Sometimes your means to resist are limited, sometimes they are nil. Sometimes you are deluded by your culture and see evil deeds as righteous.

Sometimes the professors teaching you a class on ethics are full of shit.

[Ranger_Jeff]

Ask your ethics professor what branch of the Armed Forces he served in.

[Lorene89095]

If the Germans had won the war,the soldier would be a hero…

[GusNSpot]

@Absinthe_Anecdote

Sometimes your means to resist are limited, sometimes they are nil. Sometimes you are deluded by your culture and see evil deeds as righteous.

Sometimes the professors teaching you a class on ethics are full of shit.

This ↑↑↑

[GusNSpot]

@Ranger_Jeff

Ask your ethics professor what branch of the Armed Forces he served in.

This ↑↑↑

[Johnny_L.A]

I haven’t got an Ethics professor!

[Slithy_Tove]

Maybe run an ad for one on Craigslst. See what responses you get.

[Little_Nemo]

@Absinthe_Anecdote

Sometimes your means to resist are limited, sometimes they are nil. Sometimes you are deluded by your culture and see evil deeds as righteous.

I agree with these in principle. But I think they often get wrongly applied to Nazi Germany.

The Nazis weren’t really in power all that long. It was twelve years. So every adult living in Nazi Germany could remember a time before the Nazis when the government wasn’t killing millions of people. It wouldn’t have taken any big leap for a German to know there was something wrong about the Nazis.

And because the Nazis were a relatively new regime, there were practical limits to how far they could go. They couldn’t risk having the general population of Germany turn against them. They couldn’t round up every German who didn’t support them - they had to accept a certain level of passive non-participation.

This was a point that was made after the war during the “denazification” hearings. There were people like police officers, government officials, doctors, etc who had been asked to participate in various Nazis programs. And the ones who had done so generally insisted that they had had no choice - they couldn’t refuse to do what the Nazis asked. But it was found that wasn’t true. There were numerous examples of other people in the same jobs who were asked to do the same things and just said no - and they weren’t arrested. The general rule was as long as you weren’t actively resisting the Nazis or publicly denouncing them, they were willing to overlook a lack of cooperation.

[not_what_you_d_expect]

It would be an awful situation and if it were me, I’d probably hope to get an opportunity to surrender to the other side.

[jtur88]

You draw the line between ethics and self-preservation. If deserters are being shot, you pick up your rifle and obey commands. That is not unethical.

The rub comes when your self preservation ripples out to your family, your clan, your tribe, your state, your nation, your religion.

The argument can arise according to whether you are taking up arms and defending yourself on yuour homeland, or elsewhere. If you are on your homeland, fighting an alien enemy, it is nearly always ethical. If you are somewhere else, fighting an enemy on his homeland, it is almost always unethical.

Generally, a war is never justifiable, if one side or the other can end the war by just going home,.

[VarlosZ]

If we’re talking about a conscript, I don’t think it’s a terribly interesting question. It would be laudable to try and resist, but someone who’s threatened into being a soldier, and conducts himself honorably within the usual rules of warfare, is essentially blameless.

A volunteer is a harder case, but I’d still be reluctant to hold him more than nominally at fault. Patriotism is such a universal trait, propaganda is effective, and it’s a rare person who is immune to influence from the mores of his society. There can be exceptions, but in general if merely being willing to fight for your country burdens you with responsibility for all of your country’s sins, we’re left with a morality in which probably most of humanity throughout history has been despicable.

[Trinopus]

@Little_Nemo

. . . There were people like police officers, government officials, doctors, etc who had been asked to participate in various Nazis programs. And the ones who had done so generally insisted that they had had no choice - they couldn’t refuse to do what the Nazis asked. But it was found that wasn’t true. There were numerous examples of other people in the same jobs who were asked to do the same things and just said no - and they weren’t arrested. The general rule was as long as you weren’t actively resisting the Nazis or publicly denouncing them, they were willing to overlook a lack of cooperation.

One problem is that they made themselves masters of the “chilling effect” of special examples. Every so often, they’d pick up a passive resistor of that sort, and make a very nasty public example of him. This strategic approach put a hell of a lot of fear in the hearts of everyone else.

An ideologue with a secret police force can accomplish a lot more than an ideologue with only a regular army.

[YogSothoth]

I don’t believe that human life is worth anything intrinsically therefore my answer is that the soldier should kill himself. Its worse to aid evil than to commit suicide, and his life, whatever its worth, is worth less alive and working for evil than dead.

And no, I don’t believe everyone should have the opportunity to live. Sometimes, living is worse.

[Peter_Morris]

@Ranger_Jeff

Ask your ethics professor what branch of the Armed Forces he served in.

Oh, so only killers are allowed to have an opinion on the ethics of killing?

[Johnny_L.A]

@jtur88

You draw the line between ethics and self-preservation.

@VarlosZ

If we’re talking about a conscript, I don’t think it’s a terribly interesting question. It would be laudable to try and resist, but someone who’s threatened into being a soldier, and conducts himself honorably within the usual rules of warfare, is essentially blameless.

These things are disallowed because they are not presented in the scenario. That’s why I think the question is bollocks. As I said, it boils down to ‘Given that the soldier is wrong, is the soldier wrong?’

[Quercus]

@Johnny_L.A

I point this out and say that the scenario and question are poorly formed, because the answer is defined at the outset. There can’t be any debate because debate has been forbidden. I’m wrong because I don’t accept that the answer is black-and-white, and that I insist on bringing in such things as human behaviour and self-preservation into a scenario that does not have those things presented in it. ‘Well, if you ever take an Ethics class, you’ll fail.’ Well, I find the scenario and the restrictions upon it to be unethical.

I think you need to get some friends who have had good Ethics professors.

IMO, a good Ethics professor would never spend much time on a case that they insist is black and white clear, except as a brief example to illuminate a harder, shaded grey case. And they’d never fail anyone for coming to the ‘wrong’ conclusion, if the student had clear, logical, ethics-based arguments for that conclusion.

Now even a good professor would fail a student if they didn’t try and make ethics-based arguments, of course, so a student would at some point have to accept the general framework of what is an appropriate ethical argument.