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ELEANOR HAS HELPED JAMES TO GET A BANK LOAN

Instant reaction to the statement above may be as simple as "that's nice of her" or even simpler "so what". I am going to ask the questions "why Eleanor did this?" and "was this action right or wrong?". I will construct arguments to show that Eleanor's action was right and wrong and show how the facts of the matter are important in coming to any conclusions about her action. I will discuss the role moral principles play in my arguments.

Just because we know that Eleanor helped James get a bank loan and that helping people is usually the right thing to do, we can not say that she did the right thing. Before making any moral conclusions we have to take the facts of the matter into consideration. We need to know why James needs a bank loan and why Eleanor wants to help him.

Lets say that James has stage two cancer in his liver. There is a doctor in the United States who is currently curing patients with cancer like James's. Eleanor knows that this is James's last hope for survival as his cancer is almost at the third and final terminal stage. Eleanor has little money of her own and decides that the only way to get James to America is to help him get a bank loan. Eleanor's action seems like the morally right thing to do.

A Psychological Egoist would say that Eleanor helped James because it was in her own best interest to do so. An Ethical Egoist would say that she ought to behave in a way that was best for herself (Rachels,1993,p76-77). If you asked one of these egoists how helping James benefits Eleanor and that it can not be a purely selfish act they would say something like "she thought she would go to hell if she did not" or "she thought there would be financial benefits for her if James lived". The egoists can almost always form an argument to say that an action was performed because it was in the persons best interest to do it. Their theories fail though because they are putting one person in front of everyone else and saying they have greater rights. To really test the egoist theories you only have to go so far as to put two ethical egoists in the same room for three days with one glass of water and one chocolate bar. Now each individual would see it as their moral duty to do what is best for them and to drink all the water and eat the whole chocolate bar themselves, leaving the other person starving and dehydrated. This situation obviously will not work. The result will probably the two fighting over the glass and spilling all the water so that neither has any to drink.

In all moral theories Eleanor's action would probably be considered morally right given the circumstances I have suggested. What makes Eleanor's action right in my previous example are the facts of the matter. These are vital in trying to come to any moral conclusions about her action. Lets say the facts of the matter are different and that Eleanor helped James get the bank loan so that she could steal the money from him and buy a sports car. A basic moral principle is that people ought not to steal. This principle is true in the weak sense in that Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor was right or stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family is not necessarily wrong. Moral principles are moral standards and are used to ensure people can live together in harmony. If killing was not immoral and therefore legal we would be walking about in fear all our lives.

An ethical egoist would say that Eleanor was doing the right thing because she is maximizing her own happiness and it was the morally right thing for her to do. But because stealing is basically wrong, as is greed and betrayal, Eleanor is wrong in her action. Again it's the facts of the matter that tell as if the action is wrong, not just the action itself.

I believe that people ought to help others that are in need. This does not mean supplying a drug addict with cocaine because she says she needs it, but instead helping her with the addiction. So I believe that you may have to hurt in order to help e.g. a dentist drilling a tooth (Novitz,1996). If Eleanor was helping James get a loan but it was so she could then steal his money then I think the action is wrong. If she helps him because she wants to save his life then I think the action is right.

Ethical Subjectivism says that peoples moral opinions are based on just their feelings. In this theory there is no such thing as "objective" right or wrong (Rachels,1993,p31). This means that nobody is ever right or wrong because they are simply expressing their feelings. I would like to believe that we can make decisions on what is morally right or wrong. I think that Cultural Relativism has many merits and that moral principles do change from place to place and that something can be morally right in one culture and wrong in another. In all cases the facts of the matter have to be considered. The old fashioned eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth does not work, for it does not leave room for exceptions e.g. self defence murder. I certainly reject the egoism theories although they do at first make you think you have found the answer. I conclude by agreeing with this statement "Moral truths are truths of reason; that is, a moral judgment is true if it is backed by better reasons than the alternatives."

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Philosophy Handbook, 1996
Multimedia Encyclopaedia version 1.5,1992.
Rachels, James - The elements of moral philosophy, 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill Inc., 1993.

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