When Does the Ends Justify the means?

[scoutingagain]

How do we know your the real Sturgen if you all of a sudden you use punctuation in your posts?

 

[dsteele]

I'm not much for Nietschz, but I do enjoy the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli.

 

I don't buy a lot of what he said especially when you try to bring the Scout Oath and Law to reconcile with Machiavelli's "truths," but his writing is entertaining.

 

I think he was a guy trying to save his own bacon with the Medicci's.

 

DS

[Adrianvs]

Wouldn't Nietzsches Ubermann be BEYOND the Scout Oath and Law?

 

Also, isn't saying that "Crime and Punishment" made you a believer in the Ubermensch principle like saying that "Oedipus Rex" made you a believer in the hubris method of leadership? I haven't read "Crime and Punishment" but I thought that the point of the novel was demonstrating that the man who puts himself above the law is doomed from the start. Perhaps I am mistaken..

 

[Adrianvs]

...Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thust they think it intellectual to talk about things being "high." It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. "Tommy was a good boy" is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. "Tommy lived the higher life" is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

This, incidently, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not bold at all. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, "beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man," or "over man," a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not know either.

 

-G.K. Chesterton

Orthodoxy

[Davej775]

I'll take a bite on this one, too. The wages of Sin is Death, so, really going out on the ice when you're told not to do so, to save a drowning person, or a dog, as I once did, should not be a Sin, as Death was cheated by this author for the moment. As I will eventually die. Perhaps the one Sin, Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge defying the Lord, includes all my lesser sins. Is there a lesser Sin?

I think those who employ the justification, 'The ends justify the means' are up to some smoke and mirrors. Where do all those McDonalds Happy meal toys come from? Reading info about North Korea's gulags and 'laundering' manufactured good thru China is a good start. Is the horror that produces those toys justified to make a child here in the USA smile?

By going on a frozen pond, illegally, was I justified to save a pooch? Dave J! The Truth is Out There!

 

[Adrianvs]

"You are employing situational ethics."

 

All ethics are situational. In the cases where you may think that you are speaking absolutely, you are really just using assumed and common situational premises.

 

Example: The "you" or "I" in the question is a human person.

 

"Suppose that you are self-aware." is as situational as "Suppose that you are a banker."

[Eamonn]

I was confused when this started. Now I'm lost.

Still I now know what Pablum is and from the sounds of it Fat Old Guy now has an idea what Marmite is. It is also a small soup bowl.

I am not sure in what context Ubermensch is being looked at are we looking at Superman? Or a demigod? My reading these past few years has had more to do with Scout Stuff with the odd John Grisham.

Eamonn

[dsteele]

I'm amazed at all the German guys referenced in this thread when the phrase that began is was coined by a brilliant Italian by the name of Niccolo Machiavelli.

 

Does know one but me know of him?

 

Or the rest of the quote?

 

He wrote, among other things, "Il Principe" or "The Prince."

 

DS

[Fat Old Guy]

Why would an Eye-talian be writing in German? Very strange.

 

 

[evmori]

"All ethics are situational."

 

Sounds like the PC version. There is a difference between right and wrong in every situation. The ethics don't change. Only the person's interpretation of right and wrong.

 

Ed Mori

A blessed Christmas to all!

1 Peter 4:10

[Bob White]

There are times when then ends justify the means. The case of the Civil War (War Between the States, for our southern scouters). War is a horrible thing and certainly battling our neighbors is a tragedy, but the preservation of the Union was paramount for the greater good of all.

 

The question is, who determines the greater good. Each person must do what they feel is right, and realize that their actions will be judged in this world and beyond. You must be willing to accept whatever the judgment is.

 

[Campfire Fairy]

Just have to throw in my trivial two cents...

 

The word pablum (I understand it's a brand name as well, but the words itself) means something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic.

 

It was the Word of the Day on the 19th.

 

Now I can tell all my friends who make fun of me for getting a Word of the Day email that it actually came in handy...

 

Sorry for disrupting the thread, I just wanted to share my random intellect with you fine people. ...okay, so I wanted to share my intellect with people who couldn't tell me to shut up and refuse to listen. Now you all probably already read it, so there! (This message has been edited by Campfire Fairy)

[Fuzzy Bear]

A wrong can be made right only if it prevents the individual or persons directly or indirectly involved from injury.

 

This is a measure to be carefully considered, unless the situation is an emergency and calls for immediate action.

 

Good behavior is sometimes not easily defined but we generally know it.

FB

[packsaddle]

OK, time to weigh in I suppose. My grandmother liked to warn us against needless argument. She'd say, "The more you stir a turd, the more it stinks." At the risk of raising the stench, Adrianvs, I can't find anything in your statements that I can disagree with. So there!

 

Bob White, I feel the need to correct you...around these parts it's called, "The War of Yankee Agression", and incidentally, the way my acquaintances talked about it, until 6th grade I was convinced that the South had won.

 

But it was your response, Fat Old Guy, that really got to me. I must rise in defense of pablum, put up your dukes. I'll have you know that under the right circumstances, I could feed you pablum and you'd like it. Crave it, actually. With a bad atitude like that I can't imagine your opinion of cream of wheat or my all-time favorite, porridge.

 

Everyone have a nice day.

[Adrianvs]

"'All ethics are situational.'

 

Sounds like the PC version."

 

 

Not quite.. What I meant is that ethics is what is used to tell us what is right or wrong IN ANY GIVEN SITUATION. Ethics is situational, but not in the sense that you are referring to. Yes, murder is always wrong, but ethics tells us what SITUATIONS constitute murder and what situations don't. It may seem obvious, but some individuals (PETA, NARAL, etc.) have become confused on this issue.

 

Looking at it another way, ethics is the study of proper human action. Humans, due to our nature, can only act within given situations.

 

 

dsteele,

 

I agree that Machiavelli is much more interesting than any of the Germans mentioned in the thread. It's a toss up with the Russian Dostoevsky and I am afraid that he loses hands-down with the English Chesterton.