Consequentialism Is Preferred

While analyzing the themes of Don Quixote, our classroom stumbled upon the idea of "consequentialism", an abstract philosophy that was challenging to comprehend. Consequentialism is defined as "the doctrine that the morality of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences." In other words, it is the belief that all of your actions are either morally good or bad depending on the outcome. Good outcome means it was a good action; bad outcome means it was a bad action. The intentions do not matter. To clarify, the text did not feature consequentialism; in fact, it displayed the opposite.

Within the story of Don Quixote, the main character acts according to his ideals (or the ideals of a persona) which embody a chivalrous knight. Because of his delusions, he ventures through the countryside, trying to "help" people. Although his actions may have the best of intentions, he ends up causing problems for some. To sum it all up, he performs actions without thinking about the consequences.

To a few, this rashness is an admirable trait. They believe that living according to ones ideals and acting upon them no matter what and without thinking about the consequences is virtuous. After all, if one does not think about the consequences, then that individual cannot be selfish because he/she did not think about the possible rewards in return for helping. I, however, have a different perspective: always acting on one's ideals can be dangerous and consequentialism is preferred by society.

In my opinion, the American judicial system relies on a mix of consequentialism and intentions-based arguments, but good outcomes are usually favored and bad outcomes can lead to punishment. A great example is the Good Samaritans Law. According to definitions.uslegal.com, the law protects "someone who renders aid in an emergency to an injured person on a voluntary basis. So, if put into the context of this blog post, this would be the situation: An idealist finds himself/herself in the situation of encountering an injured person who they would immediately rush to help. The Good Samaritans Law protects the person because it assumes they have good intentions, but it could also punish him/her if the act produces a negative outcome. On the same website, it details another aspect of the law which states that "...if a volunteer comes to the aid of an injured person who is a stranger, the person giving the aid owes the stranger a duty of being reasonably careful." In short, if the injuries are made worse, you can be prosecuted; however, each state enforces the law differently.

All in all, it seems that society acknowledges good intentions, but the outcome comes first when passing judgement. What do you guys think? Should the idealist, who tries to help but is careless in his helping, be punished or not? I think the person should be.