Ethical Dilemmas: The Decision To Drop The Atomic Bomb

The Decision to Drop the Bomb

In the Battle of Okinawa 1941, Japanese Kamikaze suicide pilots targeted the US in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. Over 2,400 American and British lives were taken from this world, an additional 1,178 wounded. The President of the United States, Harry Truman, was faced with an ethical dilemma of whether to use the atomic bomb against Japan that could end WWII. My goal is to try to answer this moral question using the philosophical views on the morality of Held, Kant, Aristotle, and Mill. I will also explain why I believe Kant’s theory is the most appropriate theory when answering moral questions in general.

I believe that, although difficult, President Truman made the correct decision in deploying the atomic bomb on Japan. My opinion falls in line with Mill’s moral theory of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist moral theory that focuses on the use of maximizing one’s utility for the best consequences for the

Aristotle, like Kant, believed pleasure or happiness should not be the motivating force behind moral actions. Aristotle believed happiness is only acquired through one’s virtue. He believes that “virtue is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency”(140). Aristotle’s meaning of extreme is to overcompensate by taking excessive measures to fix a certain situation. To be deficient, would be either not do anything at all or the least possible action that would produce little or no result. Vice is that action in the middle that is rational and through which produces the greatest results. However, I do not see how this could undermine my answer. I believe doing nothing would have been deficient as it would not have prevented the attack from happening again. To be extreme would be to continue fighting after the enemy as already given up as this would no longer be