Would you assassinate Hitler?

We might consider the question of Hitler's assassination in terms of the distinction between ethics and morality. For example, for me, the assasination of Hitler would have been an immoral act (thou shalt not kill), but an ethical one, given its intended consequences (saving the lives of millions). Morals are absolute (rules); ethics are relative to circumstances and goals (decisions). I think we must sometimes do immoral things for ethical reasons. And we can hide behind morality to avoid ethical acts (e.g., one might have killed Hitler, but declined the opportunity because it would have been immoral, given the commandment not to kill).

Joe, is it not possible to view ethics as not only the application of moral rules to specific circumstances but as strategies designed to bring about pragmatic results (results that reflect a sense of altruism or the drive to love others as you love yourself)? In such a case, moral systems and formal rules become merely aids, guiding principles rather than formal directives.

The central feature of an ethical or moral action is the actor, not the program directing his action. It is a matter of values and human sensibilities rather than "systems" of rules. A person is "good" not on the basis of his conformity to such rules--especially if his conformity reflects a fear of supernatural punishment--but on the basis of his desire for positive social ends. In such a case the ends justify the means even when they violate moral dictates.

By the way, do you think it impossible that an ethical act may not violate a moral rule in some culture somewhere in the world? I recall reading about the initiation rite of a young man in a Phillipino tribal society. In this rite he was morally obliged to raid another community and take an adult male's head. If I "went native" in that society but when it became my turn to be initiated I refused to take a head on the grounds that it would cause others great pain and loss, I would be considered immoral in that society (if not in the culture I had left). I only raise this "hypothetical" scenario to indicate again that ethics and morality are not necessarily or absolutely connected.

The question I would put to both Joe and JLN is this. If "Stalin" were to replace "Hitler" as the target for assassination would that have affected our decisions to be the assassin ?

It would for "me" and if so how would that be based on either "ethical" or "moral" considerations ?

My God, Joe. How you make me work. You must also be retired to have the time for this.

Our difference is fundamentally one of absolutism vs. relativism.

I maintain that an individual can have sensibilities predisposing him to benign sentiments and actions having only an indirect connection with his society's moral code. Indeed, he may even be eccentric in this regard compared to the other members of his society. I grant that he is most likely to be conditioned in some respect by his culture, but cultures are complex and internally contradictory. He is not a automaton. He internalizes norms but also may do so selectively expelling some and developing others. And he may alter his inventory of internal values throughout his life, and not necessarily in response to some higher order moral system.

To me ethical behavior reflects character more than compliance with rules. I know. You will insist that this character or its evaluation by us, must be described relative to moral principles. I think it's more complex than that.

When I suggested that ethics may be viewed as strategies designed to bring about pragmatic altrusitic results, you converted my meaning to say that a MORAL SYSTEM is simply a strategy to bring about pragmatic results, and, as such, I must be talking about a moral system. Confusing, I must say.

For you, morals are more of a "life strategy." For me, the life strategy is the ethical life, a life of trying to determine for each situation what is the most humane way to act, not a committment to the practice of responding to each situation in terms of preordained rules. That would be a canned ethical life.

Elsewhere you define a moral system as what I would consider the result of ethical decisions:
"...if I say that killing someone is to be judged by the tenets of pragmatism rather than morality, I'm saying either that pragmatism is morality (or, more precisely, the measure of morality), or else I'm saying that there is some higher order principle that places pragmatism above morality. And that higher order principle, I contend, is a moral principle."
I suggest that it need not be a "higher order principle", something explicit; it may be an expression of the individuals sensibilities, or his character, both of which may be seen from the outside for analytical or descriptive purposes as reflections of a code. From the inside, in terms of their actual reality, they are deeper, more organic, less schematic than you would have them. I see this as a general tendency of many people: to build too much logic and formalism into the more inherently organic and ambiguous nature of things. We must not transform the subject in order to impose an understanding onto it.

I was saying, or trying to say, that killing someone (in the case of Hitler, of course) was intended to bring about (pragmatically) the saving of millions of lives. This is not the same as elevating pragmatism to the level of a moral code. I do not understand that strand of your argument.