An attempt to find out the basic principles of morality made Immanuel Kant. The merit of Kant is that his conception of morality is deduced from logical reasoning rather than empirical observation. Kant believes that the principles of morality should be inferred not from the nature of man and the circumstances of his life, but from the concept of pure reason, on which moral theory may be based. This means that the concept of morality is self-contained, has a reason in itself. Morality, according to Kant, is the realm of human freedom, the will of whom is autonomous and is determined by him. This will needs to reconcile with the highest moral law - the categorical imperative, because only free will is capable of making the right choice. The most famous formulation of the categorical imperative is: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction" (Kant, 2002). In other formulations of the categorical imperative Kant emphasizes the moral self-worth of individual (no individual can be considered as an object), his ability to moral creativity. In fact, freedom, understood as a voluntariness of behavior, the personal choice of its principles, focused on their universal significance, is identified with Kant’s morality. It is different from the legality which is stimulated by coercion or personal interests.
Killing of one person by another should be considered from Kant's position. Consider the killing in terms of the categorical imperative. If one person kills another, then would he want to spread his maxim on the entire congregation as a universal law? Motive for the killing in this case is unimportant, because Kant believes that these are all subjective and personal interests. If taken the pure fact of murder, it can be said that it is impossible for this act to become a universal law. But for Kant's moral theory worked for the whole society, it requires that its members are guided by good will in their actions, which is complicated in modern society by factors of globalization and transnational economy. However, we cannot say that Kant's moral theory is useless. It performs the role of the evaluation methodology of human action. An illustrative example is the court where the judgment on person’s actions is made. In order to be fair, the judge needs to know from what position can he judge another person. If the decision is made only in accordance with common expectations, it cannot be fair. Let us consider one of the most controversial courts of the 20th century - the trial on Adolf Eichmann, who signed death sentence of 4 million Jews (Jewish Visual Library).
In 1941Adolf Eichmann authorized the transportation of Jews to the death camps. He attended the Wannsee Conference on January 20th, 1942, at which measures to the "final solution of the Jewish question" were discussed. Eichmann offered to solve the question of the expulsion of the Jews to Eastern Europe as soon as possible. The direct management of the operation was handled by Eichmann. In March 1944, Eichmann led the Sonderkommando, which organized the transportation of Hungarian Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz. In August 1944, Himmler was presented a report in which Eichmann reported on the destruction of 4 million Jews. After World War II, Eichmann escaped to Argentina, but in 1958 he was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence service "Mossad" and moved to Israel, where the court was held. Eichmann was accused of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, membership in criminal organizations (the SS and the Gestapo). Crimes against the Jewish people included all kinds of persecution, including the arrest of millions of Jews, their concentration in certain places, sending to death camps, killings and confiscation of property. On December 15th, 1961 Eichmann was sentenced to death by Israeli court which found him guilty of crimes against the Jewish people and against humanity and war crimes (Jewish Visual Library).
Hannah Arendt, who watched the court, comes to the conclusion that Eichmann was not the main ideologue of the Holocaust, but was narrow-minded, executive and obsessed with his career cog in the totalitarian machine. In her book, an example of Eichmann proved that in the context of moral collapse of a nation, the perpetrators and participants of mass murders are not only chiefs of the regime, but the most ordinary, mediocre people. Eichmann was not a monster or some kind of psycho. He was incredibly normal person, and his actions, causing the death of millions of people became, according to Arendt, a consequence of the desire to do his job well. In this case, the fact that this work was to organize the massacres was of secondary importance (Arendt, 1963).
The analysis of the Eichmann’s trial will make the conclusions of the research paper. On the one hand Eichmann gave an order to kill four million Jews, but on the other he did not kill physically a single person. Despite this, the Eichmann can be considered a murderer, but it is not possible to call him immoral. Nazi Germany was completely devoid of morality, and the actions of the Nazis were outside the morality. It is morally impossible to assess the crimes of each individual. There is a problem of division between the murders caused by Nazi ideology and murders committed knowingly. An example of Nazi Germany showed how an entire society almost immediately stripped of the old moral values in 1933 and as quickly returned to them in 1945. An example of an unprecedented turn of morality is the representatives of the administration of German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who held high positions in the Nazi Party (Jewish Visual Library). Historical instability of moral values makes us use Kant's moral theory, unresponsive to shifts of moral values in different countries. From this position, the actions of Eichmann were unconscious and, therefore, were not an expression of his will. Eichmann was not free, and therefore was not included in the Kantian morality. Therefore, what is now considered a true manifestation of morality is merely a manifestation of each country’s moral values, which are not universal and applicable to all cases.
Deprivation of human life is immoral, since no one would want to apply this maxim as a universal law. The murder of another person, measured in terms of somebody’s morality is at a different level from the universal Kant’s morality. Therefore, execution of Eichmann in terms of universal morality is immoral, but from the Israeli court’s point of view - morally justified. A person who commits a murder while being affected by variety of reasons may not consider his deed immoral, but if judged by universal morality, the deed is immoral in its nature. Eichmann was morally guilty, but did not deserve death. The court played role of a moral justifier of Eichmann’s execution, but did not have bases from which to judge.
Conclusions
The paper discussed the immorality of all acts of murder. Based on historical evidences it was showed that morality is constantly changing. Morality induced from outside (God, king, state) may justify the act of murder and strip the murderer of repentance. The immoral deed is not causing death itself which was seen as good or bad, it is taking person’s life, which is the highest treasure cannot be stolen by another person. Kant argued that morality should be innate characteristic of a human. That is why a closer look at Eichmann’s court showed that his act of killing people was immoral, but Eichmann himself wasn’t. Committing crimes against Jewish people he was outside the notion of morality innate to him. Israeli court’s sentence was immoral also, as it did not try to understand Eichmann’s motives and role in Nazi’s society without morality. From the prospective of universal morality Israel and Eichmann are both immoral as they claimed people’s lives with no moral right for it. Therefore to avoid debates on Israeli’s rightness, it needs to be concluded, that a person cannot be morally right when claiming another person’s life under any circumstances.
Works Cited
Arendt, H., 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. 1st ed. New York: The Viking Press Aristotle, A, 1885. Politics. 1st ed. London: Clarendon Press.Aries, P., 1974. Western Attitudes Toward Death: from the Middle Ages to the Present . 1st ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Berger, P., Luckmann T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. 1st ed. London: The Penguin Press Feldman, F., 1992. Confrontations with the Reaper. A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death . 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press Inc..Jewish Virtual Library. 1997. Adolf Eichmann. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/eichmann.html. [Accessed 10 June 13].Kant, E. , 2002. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. 1st ed. New York: Yale University Press..
