Do People Have a Moral Obligation to Be Martyrs?
or
You Don’t Joke About the Holocaust
I was milling about with some friends recently and we were discussing hypotheticals. I brought up a classic situation and asked my friends what they would do and I heard an interesting answer that I hadn’t heard before. I’m sure this goes by many forms but the one I offered went like this:
Suppose you are trapped in an elevator with 5 other people (so there are 6 including yourself.) There is only enough oxygen for 5 people and you have a gun. If you kill one person then everyone else will live and escape. What do you do?
Someone said he would shoot himself. I hadn’t heard this before and it actually caught me off guard. Certainly it was a very noble thing to do but was it necessarily the right thing to do? Or in other words, would the man with the gun have a moral obligation to shoot himself? Should he be condemned for not doing so?
I thought about this for a bit and I believe that you do not have any moral obligation to shoot yourself, or in other words, be a martyr so that others may live. I also believe that you would be justified in killing another person in the elevator to save the rest of you. I know it’s bad form to just lump these two different assertions together but I believe my reasoning may apply to both.
I base my argument on the intuitive assumption that it is ok to kill in self-defense. If a man were to come at you with an axe you would be morally justified in killing him to save yourself. I believe this scenario parallels the hypothetical in question. Although the other individuals in the elevator are not aggressors, I believe they can be classified as what philosophers call innocent threats.
A situation that demonstrates the idea of the innocent threat is that of Jews fleeing Germany during the holocaust. Imagine that you and your family are attempting to escape Germany during the holocaust. During your escape you have to evade patrols of German soldiers. Unfortunately, you have a baby with you that starts crying while you are trying to bypass one of these patrols. If the soldiers hear the baby, you and your family will be found and most likely killed. The baby in this case is seen as an innocent threat. As unfortunate and horrible a situation as this is, one could harm the baby as a form of self-defense.
The other individuals in the elevator are akin to the baby. Although they are not aggressors themselves, their presence will result in your own death. I believe that killing one of these people could be morally justified as self-defense and thus not morally reprehensible. In summary, the argument is as follows:
Premise:
(1)It is ok to kill something that threatens your own life.
(2)Innocent threats threaten your own life.
(3)One of the individuals is an innocent threat.
Conclusion:
Therefore, it is ok to kill one of the individuals.
Now this question gets interesting when you expand the situation. Suppose there was only enough oxygen for 4 people and you had to kill 2 of the individuals to save the rest. You would still be justified on utilitarian grounds, that you kill 2 to save 4. Suppose there was only enough oxygen for 1 person and you had to kill all 5. Only one person gets to live anyways, why should any of the others have any more reason to live than you? Now let’s get really interesting and suppose that for some strange reason (maybe you are just a really big guy or something) there is only enough oxygen for either you, or the 5 of them. Either, you kill all of the other people in the elevator, or you die and the 5 of them live.
I believe at the heart of this question is how far does the principle of self-defense go? And, is it ok to value yourself more than other human beings? I believe that the principle of self-defense does suggest at least to a degree that it is ok to value yourself more than other human beings. In the situation where a man is coming at you with an ax, when you decide to kill that man, you are making a value judgment. You are deciding that your own life is worth more than the ax murderer’s. Otherwise, if you believed the ax murder’s life was worth more than your own, you would choose to let yourself die in his stead (since it’s a life or death, you or me situation.) If you thought the ax murderer’s life was equal to your own, there would be no need for a principle of self-defense, after all, why bother defending yourself if it doesn’t matter who dies? Since it is ok to accept the principle of self-defense, I believe it is ok to value yourself more than another human being. This idea is also reflected in the fact that we are not morally reprehensible for not giving up luxuries, such as T.V., computers, or even electricity and toilet paper, so that we may donate the money spent to aid the poor in third world countries (despite what somebody would have you believe.)
So the question is, how much more valuable is one’s own self than other human beings? I believe from the atheist point of view, or the atheist-leaning-agnostic point of view, that one’s self could be seen as unmatchable in value by any number of human lives. Admittedly, this is frightening to suggest. The reason for this though, is that to the atheist, the self is the end all and be all. Death is akin to the apocalypse, the end of all things, and the complete and utter negation of existence. Essentially, life is not something an atheist can afford to lose. I believe the situation is different for those of faith however. By the religious, death can merely be seen as a time of judgment. Whether your soul is going to heaven, hell or purgatory (or maybe even being reincarnated,) death is something one can endure. The soul goes on, perhaps even to greener pastures. It is for this reason, that I believe the situation is different in the case of the faithful. Depending on one’s own beliefs, one’s own life may not be worth more than another, or perhaps martyrdom would become a much more viable option. At the moment, the justifiability of a faithful individual’s actions in this situation is a bit beyond my scope of reasoning. However, I am lead to believe by this argument that the destruction of almost any number of lives in an act of self-preservation by an atheist is justified.
Now with this assertion, I do not mean that it is ok for an atheist to take advantage of others for material gain or to benefit himself in all manners. Just because the self is unmatchable in value for an atheist, does not mean it is ok for an atheist to steal or murder or torture for his own amusement. When the stakes do not involve the life of the atheist, the scope of the decision decreases greatly. An atheist can afford to go hungry for a week; an atheist can afford not to mug someone in a back alley. The difference in value between a life of poverty and a life of luxury is infinitely smaller than the difference in value between a life of poverty and no life at all.
I believe this argument may have significant consequences in that it may justify the actions of a soldier who kills innocents under the orders of a superior officer (where the alternative is being court marshaled, followed by death.) I believe it may also help contribute to the justification of much larger scale actions, such as the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan in WW2 (although there has been a lot of discussion on this matter and the depth and breadth of the discussion is far beyond me to make a proper judgment on it.) I am sure it may apply to other things as well.
I would really appreciate some feedback on this argument (perhaps some counter-arguments) because, frankly, I’m not sure I like the conclusion very much. Ultimately though, I am infinitely thankful that these situations are EXTREMLY rare and will most likely never occur in one’s life. I consider this kind of hypothetical to be the stuff of nightmares and very much hope that it never actually occurs.
Tags: Philosophy, Martrydom, Ethics, Hypotheticals, Innocent Threats, Self-Defense, Unrelated to blog, Value, Value of life, Values, argument, Amatuer Philosophy
