Dealing With Ethical Issues

¶ … Ethics of Bioethics To the prudent thinker and scholar, there is little doubt that right or wrong is certainly relative. Categorical imperatives and absolutes help people to understand theories and ideas. However, they have little pragmatic value in life as it exists. Erudition in the areas of moral relativism, moral absolutism, and moral objectivism certainly confirm the preceding thesis. Additionally, there are numerous examples found in different areas of life that confirm the conviction propagated in this paper as well.

The tenet of moral relativism certainly helps to buttress this conviction that right or wrong is simply relative. Some of the best examples of this fact are readily supplied by nature. In fact, basic bioethical thought into the food chain supports this viewpoint as well. The reality of life on this planet and as found within nature is that most organisms need to consume other organisms to survive. This fact is immutable and, as such, is categorical.

However, the degree of rectitude or lack thereof assigned to this reality is all relative. People may watch a caterpillar from the time that it is conceived and become attached to its color, its semblance of personality, as well as its behaviors and actions. However, the moment a night owl swoops low and consumes it, those who are attached to the caterpillar might believe that such an action is not right.

However, those proponents who want to keep night owls off the lists of endangered species and see them preserve their numbers would almost certainly argue that such consumption is right. When there are two types of people with such divergent thoughts on such issues, it is because the notion of right in relation to the caterpillar's life is mutable based on a form of moral relativism. However, there are some issues of right and wrong that appear more closely aligned with the tenet of moral absolutism.

This concept is somewhat akin to the categorical imperative and contends there are some things or courses of action that are absolutely correct or incorrect. The classic example of this concept is doing unto others what one desires done unto oneself. However, even in situations in which it seems that moral absolutism could easily reign and make some action correct or incorrect, the doubt cast by moral relativism has a way of intruding.

For instance, when one considers the actions of Adolf Hitler in the years leading up to and during the Second World War, it appears as though his systematic extermination of those of Jewish faith is incorrigible, and far from right. However, it is worth noting that Hitler did not conceive of himself as doing something wrong. To the contrary, he believed he was doing something morally defensible in the execution of his 'final solution' by ridding his country (Germany), and certain other ones, of Jewish people.

Although some might dismiss his actions or thought on the subject as that of a madman, it is critical to denote certain aspects of them. Hitler did not consider killing from an absolutism perspective in that killing was either absolutely right or wrong. He viewed it as something that, when carried out against.