(2) What do you think of the Epicurean philosophy of life: live simply and use philosophy to reduce suffering? The Epicurean lifestyle is not a life to live at all. Only some people would be able and want to live a life like that. Personally, I would get extremely bored and then depressed in an environment like that. Many people have goals to pursue status and luxury in their lives and that is what gives them meaning. Epicurean may have viewed this as his ideal life, but he was not extroverted or motivated by the same things as others may be. To avoid fear, anxiety, and suffering is not life as the difficulties of life are what make life worth it. A person cannot genuinely enjoy the absolute highs of life without feeling absolute lows. A person can only find the things that they love if they risk finding things that they hate even if they cause negative feelings or situations. People need the balance in life to grow and learn and to disrupt this balance is disrupting opportunities and growth a person would normally get to experience. In life there are risks that everyone must take whether it be in careers, love, family, or friends. The life that he proposes is a life without adventure or risk. It is constricting the potential life a person could experience. Life is a major gamble, and a person cannot truly win or achieve their greatest without suffering some losses. To try to limit the suffering is to limit pleasure. I view Epicurus as somebody that was in a way afraid of life. Some points in what Epicurus views as a good life are fair such as living honorably and justly or that it is best to have a few good friends. Most people should live an honorable life and treat others respectfully and justly which is what I try to do but that is not to protect myself from negative feelings, it is to protect other feelings. I try to keep a smaller group of friends but that is just because it is easier to foster extremely strong bonds and build trust if you focus on less. The way I perceive what Epicurus is saying though, is that you should keep social to a minimum. I disagree with this because you can meet so many different people and learn so much from them. Different people all over can open their eyes and ensure people do not become narrow-minded. (2) Is it morally worse to intend harm than to allow harm that is foreseen? Explain using examples from your own life. It is morally worse to intend harm than to allow harm that is foreseen. When you intend to harm another person or property you are actively harming and damaging them. When you allow an event or situation to unfold, and it causes harm, you are more passively allowing something to happen as a bystander to the situation. The degree of involvement and responsibility for the harm determines which is morally worse. Involvement is a deciding factor. It is like if you could knowingly save someone from being hit by a bus and do not do it, it would still be worse to be the one driving the bus purposely hitting somebody. This would be due to the amount of involvement and the active role in the harm. In the trolley problem, it is the comparison of one person dying to five people dying. In this situation the outcome is not equal as it is comparing five lives to one life. If we make them equal with 1 life to 1, with flipping the switch and killing one person or letting the other one die without doing anything, most people will decide not to do anything as it shields them from responsibility. I could not think of any situation or scenario where intending to cause harm could be better than allowing harm to occur. Therefore, by default and with my prior reasoning intending to cause harm is much worse than allowing harm to occur. Defense of Capital Punishment Heath Gilby Saint Mary’s University April 8th The death penalty should not be abolished and there are major reasons to allow for the greatest punishment to be allowed such as deterrence, retribution, and morality. Opponents of the death penalty will propose the notion that it is inhumane, wrongful convictions are common, and that it is disproportionate in who is affected, but I will argue against these ideas in a defense of capital punishment. Deterrence is extremely effective against murder and deters members of society as they fear capital punishment. Other potential murderers would be stopped from committing murder after learning that other offenders were executed quickly and without media attention. Reoffending is also deterred by capital punishment since if a criminal is executed, they have no opportunity to commit crimes again. Some may claim that there is not enough evidence to support the death sentence based on deterrence. The death sentence takes so long to carry out, certain evidence may be inconclusive. Some convicts stay on death row for years before being executed. This can affect the effectiveness of deterrence since rapidly administered penalties set a better example for others. Although the death penalty is successful in deterring potential criminals, it would be even more effective if the legal procedure could be completed more swiftly rather than inmates being held on death row for years. The death penalty is also a just means of retaliation. By restoring this just order and making the criminal pay a price equal to the harm he has caused. When someone commits a crime, it disrupts society's order, and these crimes rob society of lives, peace, and rights. The death sentence simply restores society's order and suitably punishes the guilty for his wrongdoing. Murder victims and their families also benefit from retribution. Some may see this as vengeance, yet it is driven by the demand for justice and the notion of "an eye for an eye.". The death sentence restores the balance of justice once it has been improperly shifted in favour of the criminal. Those who oppose the death penalty argue that it is unethical for the government to take a citizen's life under any circumstance. It is unethical to fail to punish someone who has committed such a terrible crime, such as murder. The criminals are executed humanely and are not tortured or treated cruelly in any way. Most countries throughout the world utilize lethal injection to carry out the death penalty, demonstrating that the process is made as humane as possible so that the offenders do not suffer physically. Although morality is a very personal problem for many individuals, it is critical to look at the facts and recognize that capital punishment does take morality into account and is thus carried out in the most humane manner possible. Many worries about the idea that innocent lives could be taken by wrongful convictions, but this is not necessary with today’s technology. Many of those who claim this exaggerate how frequently this occurs as it is an exceedingly rare occurrence. No system of justice can consistently provide results that are 100 percent certain. We must be careful in detecting and avoiding such errors. The danger of making a mistake with the extreme due process used in death penalty cases, is incredibly low. The inevitability of a mistake should not be used to justify the abolition of the death penalty, any more than the danger of cancer from cigarettes or drunk driving accident in the ending of cigarettes, alcohol, or cars. Due process takes longer in these situations so that the court can be completely certain that the accused is guilty before sentenced to death. This helps to eliminate any errors that could result in the wrong person being executed. Although there is a minuscule chance that mistakes will occur, this does not mean that capital punishment should be eliminated. There is a disparity in terms of the races and social levels who are more frequently sentenced to death. Minorities and people with lower socioeconomic levels have been shown to be overrepresented on death row. Discrimination is not the cause; it is because certain groups commit crimes at a higher rate. Poverty breeds criminals and so it makes sense that people with lesser incomes would be sentenced to death more frequently than those with greater incomes. The death sentence should not be eliminated, because there are several compelling reasons to enable the most severe punishment possible, including deterrence, retribution, and morality. Opponents of the death penalty will say that it is harsh, that false convictions are prevalent, and that those who are harmed are disproportionately affected but these arguments can be swiftly countered especially in today’s age where technology can make things humane and crimes almost 100% clear, especially for murder cases.
