Moral behavior and acts are usually labeled by society as “good” or “bad” based on the ethical foundation that society deem them moral or immoral. Ethical acts and decision are sometimes questioned in certain situations because logically no moral code or law can be fair in every situation. In the article, the priest made the notion that stealing is valid for certain justified reasons in front of his congregation. This expressed that society today possibly we have abandoned to address some fundamental natural rights at the expense of upholding our legal and moral laws. In principle, the priest believes that stealing goes past any legal and moral consequence in this article. He also makes the argument that stealing is better than robbery or prostitution. …show more content…
One of these basic rules is “do not steal”, something children are taught from at a young age. However, ethical principles are more complicated than what is right and wrong. Sometimes morals have to be judged by the consequences and conditions in their own context. In which case this idea utilitarianism attempts to plead. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory which means that an act is right as long as happiness is the result. However, actions are deemed wrong if it is more probable to produce the reverse of happiness. There are two forms of utilitarianism that can be addressed. Bentham “principle of utility” and Mill’s “greatest happiness principle” are the two principles premises of utilitarianism. The priest notion directly relates to Bentham principle of utility. Bentham maintained that the foundation of morals and principles are grounded in this idea of pleasure and pain. Essentially, we make our decisions by what’s right or wrong, but we incorporate our personal feelings of pleasure and pain into the decision. Bentham went further to use the concept of utilitarianism to say an action is right if it maximizes happiness. If stealing instills the most happiness, then it is morally right on that individual act to steal. Otherwise, it is morally wrong. For instance, if stealing causes young kids not to go hungry and the majority of society is happy …show more content…
The hedonic calculus is a scientific formula created to measure pleasure. The hedonic calculus results in either a majority of pleasure or a majority of pain therefore we cannot distinguish between what is a higher pleasure and what is a lower pleasure or give them an order of importance. Instead, the hedonic calculus focuses on the concertation of pleasure and pain in areas like duration, certainty and extent to name a few. Let’s use the priest notion that stealing is morally justified in certain situations. Let’s say for instance a young homeless boy steals food and holds the people in the store at gun point. Under the hedonic calculus and Bentham ideology it’s essential to create greatness number of happiness for the greatness number of people, but we must evaluate the outcome. For instance, the person that had the gun on them might say the intensity of the pain was strong. In this case, the idea that might lose their life and not knowing if was going to happen. Connected that will the duration of waiting in. This question of how long did this pain last. I think in this particular situation we could find the negatives out way the positives which is a young boy was able to eat for the night. To play’s devil advocate, what if they boy had run into the store and stole food and ran out not holding anyone to gun point. In this particular situation would the outcome change. The pleasure would be outweighed in this situation