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Question
The end justifies the means.' Argue for or against the statement.
Solution
I personally feel that the end does not justify the means. We are only justified when the means that we use to reach our goals are just as good as the end result. Some examples of this are murdering your father in order to acclaim the throne, the faults behind the 9/11 attack, and cheating on a test in order to get a good mark.
Let's learn this with the help of a few examples mentioned below. As you probably already know, Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. It must have been great for the Muslims that followed Bin Laden to have watched an American landmark goes up into flames just like they had planned, so the end was good for them. Let’s think about the means that they used to get to that end. Suicidal pilots. Hundreds of people dying. In my opinion, those are not the best ways to reach a goal. Sure, they did what they wanted to do, but the way they got there was not good at all.
Any students caught cheating on any test/exam will receive a mark of 0 and the administration will be notified. Have you ever heard that statement before, or remembered something like it from your childhood days when you were at school? And, worst of all – have you ever given in to that temptation, the temptation to cheat on a test in order to get a good mark and make your parents ‘happy’? (That is, until they find out that you cheated, which they most likely will). Let’s think about what you did in detail. Your end was getting a good mark on the test. Okay. Sounds excellent! But what were your means? How did you reach that end? You cheated. Notice the opening statement to this paragraph. You got a good mark on the test, but does that really matter? No, not when you cheated, because you didn’t really understand the material – even though you got a good mark. That’s why even though the end was great, the means weren’t. And, in this case, that’s what matters.
In conclusion, I think that how you get to the end matters more than the end itself. Notice that in my very first example I’ve determined that if your brother murdered your father to claim the throne you’d be thinking that it wasn’t just. That’s because, even though he did something great and the whole court should be proud of him, he got to that high position in a bad way, so instead of everyone adoring him, they despise him. Not a good way to go.
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