(May 10, 2021 at 9:18 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: I've come across an idea that I find alarming. (I've no doubt encountered it as a result of the pandemic, but its application is not restricted to it.)
The idea is this: You are an evil person if you do not make sacrifices for the greater good. As a tangible example: If you do not take the vaccine (and whatever risks are associated with it) you are an evil person by failing to protect others. It is something like forced kindness, perhaps to the exclusion of personal safety and autonomy.
This thread isn't about vaccines, but about this specific argument. There are millions of scenarios that can be enforced using the same argument. China's one child policy is perhaps another example. You sacrifice your fertility for the greater good of others. (I'm not knowledgeable in ethics. My guess is that it is a utilitarian argument. One that values the group above the individual.)
The question: Is this approach to morality beneficial or dangerous? Should there be any limitations to it?
It looks as if you're framing this between two concepts: freedom and sacrifice. That any encroachment on our individual freedom is seen as a forced and painful taking-away -- a sacrifice. This looks like a modern, American, more or less consumerist vision to me.
The term "duty" hasn't appeared in the thread yet, I think. It used to be something important. In earlier times I suspect it would have come up right away.
Is duty always sacrifice? Is that bad?
This is from Wikipedia:
Quote:Kant's conception of duty does not entail that people perform their duties grudgingly. Although duty often constrains people and prompts them to act against their inclinations, it still comes from an agent's volition: they desire to keep the moral law. Thus, when an agent performs an action from duty it is because the rational incentives matter to them more than their opposing inclinations. Kant wished to move beyond the conception of morality as externally imposed duties, and present an ethics of autonomy, when rational agents freely recognize the claims reason makes upon them.
