RE: How far does a civilized country go before it begins to act like the barbarians it is fighting? Just asking....
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Traditional common sense morality involves three moral determinants, three factors that influence whether a specific act is morally good or bad.
1) The nature of the act itself,
2) the situation, and
2) the motive.
Or, what you do; when, where, and how you do it; and why you do it.
It is true that doing the right thing in the wrong situation, or for the wrong motive, is not good.
Making love to your wife is a good deed, but doing so when it is medically dangerous is not.
The deed is good, but not in that situation. Giving money to the poor is a good deed, but doing it just to show off is not. The deed is good, but the motive is not.
There must first be a deed before it can be qualified by subjective motives or relative situations, and that is surely a morally relevant factor too.
Furthermore, situations, though relative, are objective, not subjective. And motives, though subjective, come under moral absolutes.
They can be recognized as intrinsically and universally good or evil. The will to help is always good, the will to harm is always evil. So even situationism is an objective morality, and even motivationism or subjectivism is a universal morality.
The fact that the same principles must be applied differently to different situations presupposes the validity of those principles. Moral absolutists need not be absolutistic about applications to situations. They can be flexible. But a flexible application of the standard presupposes not just a standard, but a rigid standard.
If the standard is as flexible as the situation it is no standard at all. If the yardstick with which to measure the length of a twisting alligator is as twisting as the alligator, you cannot measure with it. Yardsticks have to be rigid.
So, in the case of Kalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack....
Can the above principles not be applied in his case, given :
1) The situation we were in ( unsure if another attack was coming ).
2) The Act itself ( which although bad, is COMPRATIVELY TAME compared to what the terrorists themselves consider torture )
3) Our motive ( to save additional lives, not to do it simply for the hatred or the hack of it ).
Well written and clearly considered post. However, I cannot accept your blanket assertion that “the will to help is always good; the will to harm is always evil.” I suppose it could come down to perspective, but if I execute a criminal, I fully intend to do him harm. Yet in the broader sense, his death benefits many by removing his moral pollution from society. In a similar vein, many liberal programs are ostensibly created with the intention of helping someone, but almost universally end up hurting many more, often including the intended recipients of their largesse.
Maybe these scenarios fall under the heading of “doing the wrong thing for the right reason,” but I’m not convinced that “help” or “harm” can be the sole factor differentiating good and evil.
Thank you for an intelligent analysis. I have misgivings about giving our government the power to create a new class of prisoners (enemy combatants) who are not entitled to the protections afforded those arrested for a crime and to prisoners of war. It isn’t because I have some love or sympathy for Muslims. Their so-called religion is evil. However, what is to stop our government from deciding that Tea Party supporters and conservative Christians are “enemies of the state” and locking them up indefinitely and doing whatever it wants.
I always think of these lines from the movie, A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!