Ethics on the High Seas, part one
April 20, 2009
The release last week of captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama made captive by the Somali pirates was amazing and close to a miracle. He is truly a hero. He offered himself to be taken as a hostage in exchange for the lives of his crew.
The official position of the U.S. government as well as the government of Israel is never to pay ransom in exchange for hostages, nor to grant other demands of terrorists. The government of Israel as agreed in the past to exchanges of prisoners.
Whether one should pay ransom to save a life is a particularly difficult ethical dilemma.
Paying a ransom will encourage more kidnapping but refusing to pay may cause the death of the hostage.
If one takes the principle approach (or Kantian) approach that one should only do what would be acceptable if universally practiced, then payment is not an option. Universal kidnappings and the payment of ransoms would lead to total chaos.
If on the other hand one takes the value-based approach and one believes that saving a life is the most important value, than of course one has to pay.
Tracey Kidder, the founder of Institute for Global Ethics says that this case is a typically case of a individual versus community dilemma not one of right versus wrong.
A third approach would be to try to apply the Golden Rule (or Biblical) approach of not doing unto others what we do not want done to us. This approach is even more problematic because the decision maker is rarely the hostage!
Negotiations are often helpful. In the case of Captain Phillips the negotiators were offering to let the pirates go free in exchange for the life of the captain. That could have been an acceptable solution. However when the life of the captain was threatened, force was the only remaining option. Three pirates were shot and killed and the captain rescued. The remaining pirate, who was on board of the ship and negotiating was taken into custody.
Often, in ethics there are no perfect solutions and one has to choose the lesser of two evils, the one least harmful. However we should remember as Max Lerner, the American politician and columnist once said, that:
“When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.”
Post Your Comment
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)