Ethics as I have known, is good or bad behavior until I learnt the definition of it as the philosophical study of morality. To which moral judgment we approach through four reasoning’s, that is: comprehensiveness, coherence, consistence and adequacy. Unless these reasoning’s are taken into account in making judgments, it may not be considered to be a valid moral judgment. Ethics is not just the right and wrong rather holds more valuable aspects like actions or behaviors which has relations or consequences to living or to the environment.
First and foremost knowing ethics and looking back on past life I realized many things that has taken place in my life or even heard of have ethical issues in them let it be from jus simple lying to killing of a person. Recalling back incidents and things that happened back in Maldives I found something to be very unethical. A famous Islamic scholar graduated from Egypt in the field of law with doctorate was one among the very few of his kind who, despite knowing religion to its top used to give verdicts related to obvious matters against the long descended cultural and Islamic beliefs and moreover against the reality. Not just people had many disagreements and hardships against him but also the many old and highly reputed scholars of Islam in the country had disagreements and contradictions with his verdicts. People threatened to kill even, but having part of the government with him it was just not an easy task for anyone, moreover killing was against just not the law but against the long descended culture of having never murdered a person in the country. However few months back the news reported him to have been murdered by someone and found dead in front of his doorway and was found by his beloved widowed wife. Ethical issues in this context are many. Starting from him giving verdicts the way he wants to make life easy, to his death by the very unhappy citizens, and also helping of such a person by the government. Almost the whole context has unethical issues which had to be dealt differently for a better outcome than death of a scholar.
Ethics tutorial class was very helpful in knowing and understanding how dynamic ethics is when we go deep into it. Learnt what and how an issue or a good or bad becomes an ethical issue. Not every good or bad thing must have to be ethical but every ethical issue is either good or bad. The topic given to half of the class to discuss was quite difficult to come to a definite conclusion to which is whether killing is better than lying or vice versa. Everyone had a different opinion and reasons to the sides they pressed more on. Some focused on the current issues around the world, for example US invading on Afghanistan and Iraq just with some made up reasons to which they never got to prove their sayings or assumptions to the world. And some had their opinions favoring killing to be better in some situations like to stop a mass spread of lies or to stop mass killing. More to the topic lying between spouses were highlighted to be better than killing, as killing just ends a life and doesn’t give the chance to change or repent.
Last but not least which goes according to my view on the topic, I prefer lying to be more better than killing as previously mentioned killing has no way back unlike lying. But then in an ethical way both are not good, and both has its own consequences. Thinking out of the box, lying dominates killing as lying can be used in various ways even for the better. For example lying even in Islam is allowed to solve a misunderstanding between two people to save their relationship. However lying in a mass can lead to death of many, and killing in different contexts can be derived differently like killing a person’s reason to live by lying.
To conclude I would say lying is always better than killing as killing has to be the last option. Lying can lead to both good and bad. But killing can only lead to the end. Lying let be it for good or bad reason, it has its own going back, and ways to make it up to the lies made. However in my opinion honesty and good understanding is the solution to both and none has to be considered over the other as both aren’t the best of practices.
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