A real-world case study of global concern and relevant ethical considerations
To begin with, in some cases, too many interhuman benefits are taken for granted by society. While people do not usually ask themselves, from a genuine philosophical standpoint, the question “what are the personal incentives to satisfy other individual’s needs?” is indeed interesting and actual. In this essay, I will provide a detailed case study of human rights violations in Afghanistan, an actual global concern, and address it from different ethical standpoints by analyzing Bentham and Mill’s vision of utilitarianism.
First and foremost, it is critical to introduce the real case of human rights violation to understand its nature from an ethical perspective. In fact, during the summer of 2021, the “Taliban”, the strongest armed tribe in Afghanistan, seized every branch of government power and became an absolute regulator in all disputes on its territory (United Nations, 2021). More specifically, the country’s national characteristic influenced almost all radical Afghanistan men to support an extremely abusive relationship with their women for the long term.
More specifically, men do not allow women to live normal lives, attend educational institutions, and become independent. Finally, the case represents hostile tribe “Taliban” representatives who violate feminine rights in all questions concerning their independence from men: school attendance, voting right, and freedom of movement in any direction.
Turning to the main essay’s question, doing good for others means giving the vast majority of the individual’s resources to help other people or satisfy their needs. In fact, by giving the vast majority of one’s forces to make pleasure to others, the individual receives a critically important factor of life satisfaction — recognition. From the ethical standpoint, people should be empathetic, which means understanding another person’s feelings, needs, and priorities. In other words, personal egocentrism must be moved from the person to the intermediation link between two people in order to know what goodness might be made for another individual. Moreover, a person ought to try to determine what do they might present to others so that they would get unexpected help, which makes even more recognition and created a “better” life objective.
When it comes to ethical reasoning, it is crucial to understand not only the ethical theory but also the main reason for doing good from a philosophical perspective. 1. On the one hand, Bentham’s act-utilitarianism represents the strong support of the “doing good” claim and reasoning (Gustafsson, 2017). To be more specific, this is because the main essence of Bentham’s philosophical standpoint is that only those actions which bring happiness and pleasure to others are morally right (Hendricks & Matthews, 2020). From this perspective, it becomes clear that moral right and being better-off for others are interconnected and, moreover, jointly enforce each other because lowering the one factor, the person will immediately lower the second. As a result, there is a strong positive correlation between the claim and Bentham’s ethical theory so that one factor might be explained by another equally.
A personal response to the ethical issues
Turning to the other possible ethical explanation, the main essence of doing good is developing humanity because of the interchangeable help. More specifically, when one person satisfies another individual’s needs, this might be done in the reverse direction, and, as a result, both people would be better off (Eggleston, 2017). From Mill’s rule-utilitarianism standpoint, those actions that increase overall happiness are moral.
In fact, Mill is convinced that only mutual benefit will result in humanity’s ethical development, which is more realistic in today’s conditions. When addressing the analyzed case, if the Taliban would make good to women by giving them freedom as they are independent individuals, the country would experience significant progress from many perspectives, such as economic, ethical, and social (Alizada et al., 2021). While women attend schools, they would be more interesting individuals so that men would have more incentives to satisfy women’s needs to gain recognition. Consequently, it is clear that humanity begins notably increasing its well-being by starting the chain of good deeds.
Finally, although both ethical theories are important for society and provide a possible approach to resolving the human rights violation issue, they might also be distorted due to their theoretical drawbacks.
- From the education perspective, the person cannot do good by only satisfying the needs of another individual because, in some cases, those who study should be forced to understand the information even though they are not motivated and satisfied (Mondal, 2016).
- When analyzing “overall success” Mill’s theory, a person might be fooled of mutual benefit and overall human development. In some cases, for instance, when an individual X lends money to Y and does not receive it, the overall happiness increased because Y might spend this money and satisfy other people’s needs. However, by increasing the general benefit, X decreases personal happiness, which is not accounted for in theory.
References
Alizada, A., & Ferris-Rotman, A. (2021). The U.S. is leaving Afghanistan, the Taliban is growing in power, and education for girls and women is already at risk. Time. Web.
Eggleston, B. (2017). Mill’s Moral Standard. In Christopher Macleod & Dale E. Miller (Eds.), A Companion to Mill. John Wiley & Sons.
Gustafsson, J. E. (2017). Bentham’s binary form of maximizing utilitarianism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26(1), 87–109. Web.
Hendricks, C., & Matthews, G. (2020). Introduction to philosophy: Ethics. Rebus Foundation.
Mondal, A. L. (2016). Mill’s critique of Bentham’s Utilitarianism. International Journal of Philosophy Study, 4(1), 13–20. Web.
United Nations. (2021). Afghanistan women’s rights are ‘red line’, UN rights chief tells. UN News. Web.