Topics Ethics

Question Should I save bad people? For example, if a murderer is drowning and I have the ability to help him, do I do it? I do not have the right to judge whether he/she is worthy or unworthy so what should my reaction be? Sure, he/she could go through the trial process but why should I risk my life for someone who might not be worthy of saving?

Accepted:
September 22, 2012

Comments

We might distinguish three levels of help by reference to the cost or risk to the helper. There is help you are legally require to give, for instance under the "Good Samaritan" laws of your state. Then there is the help you are morally required to give, which would typically go beyond the first category. Finally there is the help you are not legally or morally required to give, help "beyond the call of duty" or supererogatory help.

The law typically requires only help that imposes little cost or risk on the helper. Standing safely on the deck of a boat, you may be legally required to toss a life preserver to a drowning swimmer, for example. Here the law will not excuse you if you fail to help on the ground that you believe the drowning swimmer to be a murderer. This is indeed not a judgment you should be making, but one you should leave to the trial process, as you say.

In regard to supererogatory help, on the other hand, you are surely free to discriminate. If trying to save a drowning swimmer requires that you jump into treacherous waters where you yourself might well drown, you are morally permitted not to run this risk -- and morally permitted to run it. This means that you may risk your life for someone you truly like or admire even while you would not do the same for someone you dislike or suspect of being a murderer.

This leaves the middle category: help that is morally but not legally required. Here I would think that what you are morally required to do would vary with the person in need. Suppose, for example, that you owe your life to Susan's supererogatory rescue, a few days ago, at considerable risk to herself. In this case, you are morally required, I would think, to be prepared to bear greater cost or risk to save her life than you would be required to bear for the sake of saving the life of a stranger. The same may be true if Susan had earlier risked her life to save not yours but that of someone else. This, too, makes her more deserving of rescue and thereby increases, at least slightly, the cost you ought to be willing to bear to save her life.

If deservingness indeed matters in this way, then undeservingness would seem to matter symmetrically. Suppose Slop did not make a morally required rescue effort for you when you were almost killed by a rip tide last week. In this case, it would seem that the cost or risk you ought to be prepared to bear for the sake of rescuing him is smaller than the cost or risk you would be morally required to bear for the sake of rescuing a stranger (and definitely smaller than the cost or risk you would be morally required to bear for the sake of rescuing Susan).

In the cases of Susan and Slop, their (un)deservingness is closely related to the decision you face. One might say then that the amount of cost or risk you are required to bear for the sake of rescuing Susan or Slop contains an element of reciprocity. Those who are more (less) altruistic in their rescue behavior deserve more (less) altruism from potential rescuers when they themselves are at risk of drowning.

Does the relevance of desert hold up when its basis is quite different and perhaps also distant in time? One problem facing an affirmative answer is that you are unlikely to know more than merely a tiny fraction of all the good and bad things some endangered swimmer has done. Still, you may have some rough overall judgment of the swimmer's character, and I would think that this judgment should influence you in deciding how much cost or risk you ought to be prepared to bear to rescue this person. The cost or risk you ought to be prepared to bear for the sake of saving the life of someone you, with good reason, believe to be a murderer is then less than the cost or risk you ought to be prepared to bear for the sake of saving the life of a stranger which in turn is less again than the cost or risk you ought to be prepared to bear for the sake of rescuing someone you, with good reason, believe to be a benefactor of humanity.