Question

Jill is visiting her aunt Esther in a nursing home. Esther is dying, and one of her remaining pleasures in life is to follow the fortunes of the New York Yankees on television, and in print, as she has been doing since she was a little girl. Esther is also wealthy, and she asks that Jill take $6 million and give it to the Yankees, for them to do with as they see fit.

Jill promises solemnly to do so, repeatedly, and over the course of the next few days Esther slips into unconsciousness and dies. Despite her promise, Jill starts thinking about whether the money could be better spent by contributing it to several charities. One of her favorite charities is Pediatric AIDs. Others include St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Doctors without Borders, the ASPCA, and Against Malaria. Why not divide the $6 million evenly among these five charities, she muses, giving each $1.2 million?

Jill recalls a moral doctrine known as utilitarianism, which she learned of in a college survey course on ethics. Utilitarianism, first formulated by the British moralist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), stated that a good action is one that promotes the “greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” If this is a good formula, she thought, wouldn’t it be best to spread her aunt’s wealth and contribute to the well-being of all the people these charities serve? Jill thought of herself as a utilitarian when it came to morals, and she reasoned that this was the morally right thing to do. She felt confident that her intended course of action was the best one.

She told her friend Martha about her plan, and Martha was horrified. “How can you promise your aunt to donate the money to the Yankees, and then turn around and do what you want?”

“But the Yankees don’t need that money,” Jill responded. “They are rich already. They are a multi-billion dollar organization, and $6 million is just a drop in the bucket for them.”

“That’s not your business,” Martha replied. “It was your aunt’s wish that her money be donated in that way, and you must honor the promise you made.” Martha then countered Jill’s utilitarian leanings with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) moral system, known as deontology. Kant’s philosophy is grounded in moral duties. One of those duties is telling the truth. This duty cannot be cancelled, Kant argued, just because another course of action would bring about a greater result. Kant grounded this duty in the rationality of his categorical imperative, which states: “Act always so that the maxim (or intent) of your action can be universalized.” “We cannot break promises unless we would want everyone to break them,” Martha reasoned with Jill. “And we cannot rationally will that all people break their promises. So you cannot break this one.”

“But Esther will not even know that I broke the promise,” Jill countered, “because she is dead. I will be the only one who knows that the promise is broken.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Martha said, raising her voice. “A promise is a promise. The act of promising creates a solemn duty. It is your duty to carry out that promise. The only thing that would relieve you of such a promise is if Esther had changed her mind. But she didn’t. So you must do for her what you said you would.”

Who was the better argument, Jill the utilitarian or Martha the deontologist? Defend your answer, and read the assigned pages in chapter two of the text, and other sources that you might deem relevant.

Answer 1

According to me, the argument supplied by Jill about utilitarian ethics is more appropriate. This is because, utilitarian ethics aims at the actions whose consequences would bring happiness to the maximum number of people. If the promise is to be kept according to the deontological ethics, it would ignore the consequences, which in this case will not be beneficial to many people.

Ethically, consequences of an action make the most impact. If aunt was alive, it would have been the first choice to keep her promise, so that she is satisfied and is happy. But in this case, the donation to yankees would not serve for even a single person.

On the other hand, if the money is donated to the charities, it would mean big deal to them along with serving for Nobel causes. Hence, the utilitarian ethics should be moved forward with.