Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Ethics, Economics, and Government 149
sions are too painful to be faced this way. For instance, in the hope of preventing
social evils such as murder and rape we inflict terrible injuries on
persons we believe to have committed these offenses. We have chosen one
evil to prevent another, but, as Shaw notes, frankly to call it that “provokes
a stare of surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment
or justice or something else that is all right” (Pref. Major Barbara
3:24). We cannot bear to think that our choice is merely the lesser of two
evils; we must somehow transform it into a positive good. This willful
blindness to what we actually do is provoked by our humanitarian instincts—we
do not wish to brutalize others—but leads to greater inhumanity
than honest realism would. Faith in justice and punishment may
blind us to the knowledge that there are better ways to prevent rape and
murder than to brutalize the perpetrators and then turn them loose again.
The confusion surrounding the common use of the expression “the end
justifies the means” provides an excellent illustration of idealistic refusal
to accept responsibility for choosing a lesser but necessary evil. Originally,
the phrase meant that means must always be justified by their ends. This is
common sense: one does not burn down a house to get rid of a fly. To put
the question in commercial terms, Is the product worth the price? Nowadays
one hears that “the end justifies the means” is a pernicious, cynical
Machiavellian doctrine. But how else can means be judged except in light
of the ends they aim to facilitate? If a surgeon cuts off a man’s leg, you ask
him why. If he says he did it to save the man’s life from a cancer that would
otherwise have spread to the rest of his body, you may accept his answer. If
he says it was the only way to remove an unsightly birthmark, you should
seek to revoke his license. No one believes that any means can justify any
end. Yet there may be certain ends that might justify any means. In the
same way, it is always possible that some means should never be employed
regardless of the goal they achieve. Once you accept the idea of a hierarchy
of potentially conflicting values, there is a possibility either that certain
goals will be deemed worth any price or that certain means must never be
employed regardless of their result. There is always the possibility that
some value will surpass all others. We may hope that we never have to
choose between our most cherished values, but the possibility exists. Extreme
circumstances might force such choices on us, as illustrated by the
film Sophie’s Choice, but for some people, like Dr. Ridgeon of The Doctor’s
Dilemma, such alternatives can be fairly common.
The dread of the doctrine that the means justify the ends arises from a
form of moral idealism and is naturally at odds with Shaw’s ethical real-