Consider the Following Case

Essay

Consider the following case. ​You and six others have been drifting in an open lifeboat for weeks. You have no food or water left, and all efforts to catch fish or seabirds for food have failed. There is no realistic hope of rescue. Everyone will die soon unless food can be provided somehow, and everyone is getting too weak and sick even to try to get food. Since you are the weakest and sickest person in the boat, you are told that, according to the "Custom of the Sea," you will be killed and eaten so the rest may have a chance of survival. ​Now, using at least two of the four major ethical theories we have studied (Kant's duty-defined morality, Bentham's or Mill's utilitarianism, Aristotle's virtue ethics, and the feminist ethics of care), make an argument that the others in the lifeboat would be doing something morally wrong if they ate you. Use at least one of the ethical theories to argue for your position, and at least one other as a counterargument to be refuted. Alternatively, you may use at least one of the ethical theories we have studied to make an argument that eating you would be morally acceptable, even right, in the circumstances, defeating the counterarguments of another ethical theory.