Do the Right Thing

Is It Ever Wrong to Do the Right Thing?

That's the question residents of New York Mills, MN asked in this year’s "Great American Think-Off” philosophy competition, whose final four debaters made their cases Saturday night (June 13th). John Pollock, a civil rights attorney from Montgomery, Alabama won the gold medal.

Mr. Pollock asserted that intentionality is more important than the perceived end in determining if an action is good or bad. Arguing that we all must acknowledge that it is sometimes right to do the wrong thing, for example to lie to protect a higher good, he effectively proposed to the audience that the basis of what is right should not be placed on result primarily. He gave the example of a bank robber whose goal was simply to rob a bank but who caused the death of an elderly patron from a heart attack in the process. Within our social contract, Mr. Pollock argued, that bank robber will be charged with murder even though that was clearly not his goal.

Unintended consequences from our belief that we are doing the right thing, Mr. Pollock proposed, can lead to greater evil than we can foresee before any action. In the end, the audience agreed with Pollock’s understanding that what is right, at least in America, is understood to be an evolving set of ideas, not a static set of principles that never changes.

From: Great American Think-Off website.