The End Justifies the Means

In Plaissance's first chapter of Media Ethics, he brings up the idea of "the end justifying the means." However, Plaissance quickly dismisses it as both immoral and unethical, claiming that treating other individuals as "means" rather than "ends" is essentially dehumanizing. While I agree that treating individuals as "ends" is important and fundamentally moral, I think Plaissance's dismissal of the "end justifying the means" concept overlooks the impact of human nature on solving ethical dilemmas.

Plaissance defines ethics as being "based on rational justifications" to determine what is right or wrong in a given situation. It is a logic-based process. Thus, to determine what course of action is ethical, one must look carefully at both the means through which it is achieved as well as the outcome. Deontological, or duty-based, ethics emphasizes the "means." The ethical nature of the act one performs is more important than the outcome. Conversely, teleological ethics emphasizes the "ends." The outcome is the key component in determining whether the course of action is ethical. I think that in reality the teleological process is most commonly applied because of our inclination to strive for "happy endings." Most individuals would rather look at the nicely packaged outcome than the rough process of getting there when determining the ethical nature of a situation. Machiavelli touches on this idea in The Prince stating that "One looks to the end. So let a prince win and maintain his state: the means will always be judged honorable, and will be praised by everyone."

The majority of people tends to favor the "end justifying the means" concept. However, based on facts and situational factors, this method does not always prove to be ethical, but it is also not always unethical either. When reading Plaissance's chapter, I felt as if he immediately painted this method as unethical before fully explaining its implications. There definitely exist circumstances where unethical means are not absolved by an ethical end. If you were to rob a store to feed your family, your actions would still be considered unethical because you broke the law, regardless of your moral intentions. But there are also situations where the ethical end is more important than the questionable means. If a paramedic damages someones property while trying to reach the individual who is in physical distress, the means by which he performed his job are irrelevant when compared to the outcome of saving someone's life. Determining what is ethical or not is very circumstantial, and I think Plaissance failed to thoroughly convey that in this chapter.