Ends and Means(M. K. Gandhi, Peter Singer)

A student wants to top the class. She studies all night, every night — a good means to a good end. Now change one fact: she instead steals the question paper the night before. The end, topping the class, has not changed at all. Only the means has. Ask yourself why the second version troubles you and the first does not, and you have already started doing the philosophy this topic asks for.

In two minutes

A good end does not automatically make the means used to reach it good, and this topic asks you to test that claim against two very different thinkers: Gandhi, who insisted the means and the end are inseparably linked, and Peter Singer, who examines real cases where a noble goal was pursued through a questionable method.

The rest of this chapter

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