Ethics of Self Defense Vs King's Non Violence Essay

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King and MachiavelliMartin Luther King Jr. expresses his belief that nonviolence requires that the methods used to achieve a goal must be just as ethical as the objective being pursued. In other words, if a person wants to achieve a just and moral end, such as ending racial discrimination, they must use peaceful and ethical means to attain it. It is not a matter of the ends justifying the means, or the means justifying the ends. There must be moral agreement between the two. For example, he could not justify ending discrimination by killing everyone in power and overthrowing the government through violent revolution. The end of discrimination would be good, but the means—violent force—would be considered immoral. Or, nonviolent means could be moral but if the nonviolence is used to keep people in oppression, that is not good either. The means must be morally good, and the end pursued must be morally good. King wanted to use nonviolent protest to achieve the end of racial discrimination.In short, King believed that the end he sought was a society that treated all individuals with dignity and respect, regardless of their skin color. The means he approved of were peaceful and nonviolent actions, such as civil disobedience, sit-ins, and protests. He emphasized the importance of peaceful demonstrations, even when met with violence, as a means of creating lasting social change.

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Thus, he wrote in “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “In no sense do I…

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…or Machiavelli, in my opinion, King's approach is more reasonable than Machiavelli's. While Machiavelli's approach may work in the short term for a ruler who does not care about ethics or ultimate consequences, it is not sustainable in the long run nor morally right. The use of immoral and unethical means to achieve a goal is what egoists try to justify, and it will eventually undermine the legitimacy of the objective itself. In contrast, King's nonviolent approach is not only more ethical but also more effective in creating lasting change in terms of focusing on swaying the hearts and minds of good people in positions of power. (Whether it would have the same effect if the people in power were not good….....

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