Nothing more than a cockcroach

From "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky
The setting and context:
1860s st. petersburg, russia.
The main character is at a bar, and overhears a conversation between a police officer and a student. They're having a discussion about the old lady who owns the pawn shop and about how rich she was.
The student says he wouldn't feel remorse if he killed and robbed that sick old hag.
"A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one
tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s (her younger sister) finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”

Is the death of 1 justifiable if its for the greater good? (hitler, darth vader, etc)
What intrinsic value does a single life carry?

(i recommend this book to anyone who hasn't already read it.)
(heavy marxism in this part, the book is not political)

 

Crime and Punishment is probably my favorite book of all time. The moral struggle that Raskolnikov has follows a principle of pure utility, with no regards for justice. This leads to him practically coming apart, even though he was not as big of a beneficiary as he could have been (having sold the stolen items).

 

Life's individual value is 1. If you can take one away to save others, I see no problem with that.

All life has intrinsic value, that which is potentional.

 

There was no altruism concerning the death of the woman in Crime and Punishment, it was not for the benefit of others, but the main character justified it by saying that she did not contribute to society (which, by your second statement, fails the requirement of potential).

 

"Is the death of 1 justifiable if its for the greater good?"

Was the question.

@Red text, if that is so, then what I said does not apply.

Potential is the capability of achieving something. It isn't specific, nor is it meant just for good deeds.

Murderers have the potential to be serial killers.

 

I personally like my country's history. I like all related to the WW2. And I do like reading this kind of books, they show a little piece of culture to other peeps who may be interested in our culture which in the end results grateful for us, Russians.

 

I like the concept of greatest aggregate happiness (Bentham on Utilitarianism) until you get to the problem of, for example, throwing the Christians to the lions. Where using the greatest aggregate happiness principle the death of the Christians in the coliseum was okay because more spectators got pleasure from the ordeal than the number suffering who didn't. So can we really use that principle?

I feel the Kantian & Utilitarian moral philosophies really debate this kind of thing in to uncertainty - neither is quite enough to satisfy me.

 

That's why you rely on rule utilitarianism instead, because it would have to be a compelling amount of good produced (happiness from watching someone get shredded by a lion doesn't suffice) in order to break the rule of "don't kill people".

 

Categorical imperative my friend.
Imagine that world.

 

But there are problems with that as well and rules become subjective

 

I think that any individual has infinite potential, and it is the greatest crime to take that away