Moral Obligation by Bentham Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Moral Obligation by Bentham - Essay Example According to Bentham, "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as determine what we shall do." (Moore, "Moral and Political Philosophy", p. 282). How a person perceives such obligations to be accepted or rejected, depends upon the conditions it describes make it fair to adopt the stance or not. Moral obligations can be referred to those errands, which one considers to be an essential instance of personality to be adopted. It depends upon as to what extent one feels him socially responsible to be answerable to those instances. These instances show the extent of how much a person is humanistic in behaviour and shows that the conditions of rational power satisfy this constraint: that it is fair to hold people morally responsible if they possess the rational power to grasp and apply moral reasons, and to control their behavior by the light of those reasons. As far as my opinion is concerned I believe every individual in this society has a right to live and let live and not only live but live happily and contentedly which can only possible if one is aware as how to justify morality whatever be the circumstances, this morality teaches us as to how to least expect from the society and giving the society the best we possess in moral notions. When it comes to 'expectations', episodes of guilt, resentment, and indignation are the outcomes of our justifications. Once this interpretation of the reactive emotions is in place, we can draw on it to account for the stance of holding people morally responsible. That stance is characterized by the responses of blame and moral sanction; to understand the stance, we therefore need an interpretation of blame and morals. We should consider those facts that we believe society expects from us, rather than what we expect from society. Only in this case we would be able to fulfil our moral obligation toward s society, our country and above all, ourselves. Â  Euthanasia - Is it immoral to allow Euthanasia to a patient "Euthanasia is the deliberate production of the death of a human being on the grounds that in his situation it is considered that it is better that he should be dead than that he should continue to live". (Wilkinson, 1990, p. 10) Many thinkers and philosophers believe that Euthanasia is immoral. According to Rachels, "thinkers oppose killing patients in any circumstances whatever. However, they think it is all right, in some special circumstances, to allow patients to die by withholding treatment". If we view 'Euthanasia' in the light of philosophical rationalizations, we would come to know what Epicurus has tried to explain, "death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality". (Moore, "Moral and Political Philosophy", p . 291) As said by Epictetus, "Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control". (Moore, "Moral and Political Philosophy", p. 293)