HOW STEALING CAN BE VIRTUOUS

Suppose you are an engineer supporting your family.  However, you’ve hit tough times, money is very tight, and you don’t think you will have enough to pay your bills next month.  You then get a job offer by a major corporation to build a coal-based power plant to power one of their factories.  The job pays very well and will ensure economic stability for at least a year, but you know the smog produced by the plant will blow into neighboring towns, negatively affecting their health as well as contribute to greenhouse gases.  While you wrestle with the morality of this decision, you realize that if you decline, the corporation will just go to someone else and the plant will be built either way.

Do you come to terms with the fact that there’s nothing you can do to stop the creation of a major pollutant and make the best of a bad situation by accepting the job so you can take care of your family?  Or, do you consider your values to be absolute, and turn down the job on principle?  Either choice is not necessarily more “moral” than the other.  Whether you know it or not, your decision will ultimately boil down to how you define your own moral code.

Consider Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperatives.  Kant believed in the categorical imperative, which is the concept of absolute and binding laws for morality.  The philosopher formulated four binding moral rules called formulations by which all humans had to abide.  The first rule stated that all humans must act according to a code that you would will to become a universal law.  For example, say you’re working as a cashier at an auto-dealer on a rainy day.  A customer brings a headlight replacement for her burnt-out bulb to the register, but as she pulls out her cash, she realizes she is a couple bucks short.  Unfortunately, you don’t have your wallet on you to be a good Samaritan, but you could potentially tell the customer not to worry about it and push the transaction through anyway.  Doing so would technically be stealing from the auto-dealer, but you know that when profits are tallied at the end of the month, no one will realize or even care that two dollars are missing.  However, if you help out the customer, you would be doing a lot of good by helping her and other drivers avoid a potential accident on a rainy day.  So, is helping out the customer okay given the circumstances?  According to Kant, no.  Doing so would mean that you would will stealing to become a universal law, which would mean that everyone can steal when they think it is for a justifiable good.  However, what one person feels is justifiable may not be what another person thinks is justifiable.  If everyone can steal whenever they believe it is justified, that would be problematic as well.  Kant’s moral code is built on absoluteness- no exceptions and no excuses ever.  Kant’s second rule states that humans are ends in themselves and must never be used just as a means.  An obvious example of this would be that slavery is not allowed, because that would be using humans strictly as a means.

Armed with these two formulations, we can deduce how Kant would react, had he been an engineer in the 21st century.  According to Kant’s first formulation, accepting the job would be akin to saying that people should always put the financial welfare of their family above the common good and do things that will negatively affect large numbers of people and the environment if it benefits one’s family’s financial need.  However, this seems counter-intuitive.  How can one categorically argue this? Therefore, it is not permissible to take the job.  Kant would turn down the offer because as a Kantian, his moral decisions are outcome-independent, and regardless of the fact that the plant will be built anyway and his hypothetical family needs to be supported, it is wrong to do something that he would not will to become a universal law.

However, now let us consider Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who propose the concept of utilitarianism.  Utilitarianism is a moral code that strictly focuses on the outcome.  Very simply put, the principle of utility declares that one must choose whatever action provides the greatest good to the greatest number.  Utilitarianism, similar to Kantianism, also states that you are no more special than anyone else, so therefore all decisions must be made from the position of a “disinterested and benevolent spectator”.  Returning to our cashier dilemma, pushing the transaction through so that our customer can drive safely home in the rain provides a greater good than the minuscule profit the auto-dealer will have made, so had our cashier been a utilitarian instead of a Kantian, they would have helped out the customer.

If the engineer was a utilitarian, they would realize that either way the smog will be produced, but by accepting the job they can at least help their family, which will provide more good for more people than if they turned down the job.  Therefore, unlike Kant, our utilitarian would take the job.

In summary, two different moral philosophies can lead to two different decisions when faced with a moral dilemma.  However, following either philosophy without question would leave me with a sense of dissatisfaction.  If I declared myself a Kantian and turned down the job, I would feel guilty that the reason I will not support my family is because I cannot compromise my values, even if it means that my family suffers as a result. Had I declared myself a utilitarian and accepted the job, I would still feel terrible about the harm I am causing the environment and to the large group of people who will be affected by it.

The fact of the matter is that while perfectly rational beings would use a Kantian or utilitarian mindset to calculate the best decision, human beings tend to make decisions with their “gut feeling”.  For example, would the cashier really determine whether or not their potential actions would hold up to Kantian/utilitarian standards?  Probably not.  The cashier would just spot the customer a couple bucks so that she can drive home safely because the cashier would feel that that is the right thing to do.

This is not to discredit the moral codes proposed by these philosophers.  Giving consideration to these moral codes is like having a close circle of wise friends who each suggest you examine a moral dilemma with a different lens.  But ultimately, people decide with their gut.