Is it ever justified to kill another human being?
In his book, the Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Keneally famously stated, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” This book, set in the era of Nazi Germany, is written about a member of the Nazi Party who attempts to save his Jewish employees from the wrath of his own party. The aforementioned quote highlights the importance of each individual and supports the claims that even one man can make a difference.
The above idea, that each life is sacred, draws from, and is an example of Immanuel Kant’s absolutist view on morality, in which he argues that “the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfill our moral duty.”[1] Hence, according to Kantian ideology, there is a universal standard against which all moral queries are judged, and that certain actions like murder, theft, and lying are absolutely prohibited. While it’s possible to understand moral absolutism in a strictly secular context, it’s imperative to note that all Abrahamic religions follow a similar code of conduct. Religious individuals often define morality in terms divine commands, which, under any circumstances, are absolute and hence, cannot be challenged. These moral principles or ‘divine commands’ segregated all ethical decisions into two categories: moral and immoral. Whilst religious institutions could…show more content… manipulate ‘divine intervention’ to create a universally unquestioned source of what distinguishes moral from immoral, this argument, due to the lack of an absolute authority, fails to hold any ground
