I watched the TV drama “Boston Legal” today. The title which I watched was “Fine Young Cannibal.” I’ve never heard the word “cannibal”, so I looked up the word in my dictionary… “Oh my God! What a horrible meaning!” By the way, the defendant told the reason why he ate his best friend. He said “I was starving…”
When I was watching this scene, I remembered the moral theory of Carol Gilligan. Based on the scene and Gilligan’s theory, I thought about the question “Is cannibalizing forgivable?” I think that a preconventional person may answer the above question like this “Yes! That’s none of your business!! The reason is simple. If I were starving, I would eat human!!” A conventional person my answer like this “No. That is because cannibalizing is legally-prohibited.” Last postconventional person may answer like this “Yes. Under certain extreme circumstances, I may eat human…but off course I know cannibalizing is strictly prohibited by law.”
After thinking about the above, something about the idea bothered me… If you were in extreme conditions that you have no water and no food for several days or weeks, and your best friend unfortunately had died earlier than you… what would you do looking at your friend’s dead body?
Difficult moral question… That would definitely arouse a severe inner struggle. Psychomachy???
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