Assignment Task: ETHICS: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
In a 1946 essay, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described a dilemma faced by one of his students. The young man's oldest brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940, and the young man felt compelled to avenge him. Meanwhile, he lived alone with his mother, who was frail and still deeply affected by the death of her oldest son. The young man was her only consolation. According to Sartre's retelling, he realized that his disappearance or death in war would plunge his mother into despair. The young man found himself torn between his personal devotion to his mother and the noble cause of fighting with the anti-Nazi resistance. Sartre suggested that the dilemma could not be answered by an ethical theory, writing, "nothing remains but to trust our instincts."
Q1. Do you think that a monistic ethical theory, such as act utilitarianism, can settle the young man's dilemma? Why or why not?
Q2. Sartre thought that the young man's dilemma couldn't be resolved by any ethical theory and that the young man would have to decide based on instinct. Are there some moral dilemmas without an answer? In such cases, should we simply trust our instincts?