Kantian Duty-Based Virtue Analysis

The following is my assessment of how the various theories answer the question if a captured terrorist should be tortured when other methods have failed to retrieve information to thwart an imminent attack on the U.S.

The utilitarianism theory is an ethical theory that is interested in seeking the greatest benefit for the maximum number of people. Utilitarians are concerned with good consequences and the general good. In this scenario, they would say if torturing the prisoner would get information that would thwart an attack and keep many lives safe, it would be all right to do it. This would only hurt one person, the terrorist, and would give maximum benefit of the many lives that would be saved from danger.

In the Kantian duty-based

Its goal is excellence of character and making moral decision and right choices. Virtue theorists were Aristotle and Plato. They emphasized the kind of person to be to live a fruitful life and fulfill human telos (end). Virtues help to become excellent human beings as opposed to vices that lead to dysfunctional humans. Plato’s virtues included wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice to be a proper person and society. Aristotle added to this list self-control, friendliness, justice, and others. Considering these virtues as character goals and using moral reasoning, those who believed in virtue ethics would consider it wrong to torture the terrorists. Also, they would consider what it would do to those doing the torture; it would affect their character and virtues. It would set a standard, a moral tradition, for society to torture. The only possibility to consider torture would be if it were the lesser of two evils and could be called “tragic

First of all, it recognizes that all humans are created by God in His image. Torture therefore would dehumanize the terrorist. In both the Old and New Testaments, we are told to love God and our neighbor. The New Testament goes even further, as Jesus says we should even love our enemies. Torturing the terrorist would not be showing love to an enemy. In the O.T. God often commanded Israel to wipe out their enemies, but this was only if the preservation of Israel was at stake. In the N.T. Jesus gave us the Golden Rule. If torture is used, then those who do it become as bad as the enemy. Only those who were evil used torture. The tortured were the righteous. Christian ethics are based on a balance between agape love and justice. The guiding principle is what brings glory to God and a desire to do God’s will. God’s grace for man, as exemplified in the Father sending Jesus to save mankind is a prime example of Christian ethics. Although some Christians may advocate torture of terrorists, it does not line up with Christian ethics, and therefore torture would not be an option in Christian based