Composition in the direction "Aims and means".

The statement given to me is quite contradictory and ambiguous, like any other question that involves long discussions. Does the end always justify the means? And does it justify at all? Should one correspond to the other, and what should be the end so that all means are good for it?

On the one hand, the whole life of a person is a movement with some purpose, in most cases it is taken as the “meaning of life”. A house, a family, a good job, a car, an apartment, a gooseberry garden, a small business, world peace - all this can become the meaning of everyone's existence. Does it make sense to think about the means to achieve your goal? Of course, yes, because in our life any obsessive thought can break into reality and the very fact that a person is constantly changing, growing up and improving. And if today, for example, it seems to me that for the sake of life in the capital it’s worth going over heads, then tomorrow, quite possibly, I will kiss the hands of my grandmother in a small village on the very outskirts of our country, strive for something completely different and condemn yourself for what you have done in the past. So, for example, the main character of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" for a long time considered it his goal to prove to himself and others that with the help of evil deeds one can come to good. In other words, he believed that in achieving a noble goal, criminal means are acceptable. According to Raskolnikov's theory, there were two types of people: worthy and unworthy of life, and the hero believed that by killing the latter, you can create an ideal, kind world. However, having committed the murder of an old woman, the hero realized that his idea was inhumane, and he himself, having taken this step, did not become better than those scoundrels who surrounded him. These included, for example, Svidrigailov, a vile and low personality who did not disdain by any means in order to achieve his dirty goals. Raskolnikov's repentance and Svidrigailov's suicide proved once again that the end does not always justify the means.

Another example is the hero of the novel N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls". Chichikov's goal was a high social status and self-enrichment. The hero decided to take a rather desperate step: having redeemed many “dead souls” from various landowners, he would without much difficulty at the same time acquire the status of a large landowner, and, having received a large loan for his peasants, the hero would also have the opportunity to have large capital. To this end, Chichikov began his difficult path and resorted to a variety of means, but the very nature of the hero did not allow him to sink too low and behave, for example, in the same way as those landowners to whom he addressed with his deal. Of course, the final ending of the novel remained in the second volume, however, it seems to me that the fact that Chichikov, having managed to find an approach to each landowner, nevertheless achieved his goal and collected the required number of dead souls, without doing anything like that, for that he himself might be ashamed. Thus, Chichikov's goal justified the means applied to it.

In conclusion, I would like to note once again that there is no and cannot be a specific answer to the question posed in the test. The end can justify the means only if the honor and dignity of a person do not suffer.

End justifies the means.
Life can only be a means, and its value therefore depends only on the value of the ends it serves.
G. Riknnostekert

The slogan of the Jesuits, displayed in the headline, is usually criticized. It is understood that the end justifies any means. But any means do not lead to the achievement of a specific goal.
The statement can be supplemented: the goal justifies any means that lead to the achievement of this goal. One can agree with this statement, although critics believe that this phrase is a call to immorality.
There are only immoral goals and immoral people, and then any means that lead to the achievement of these goals by these people become immoral.

The end justifies the means - this phrase should be understood so that the end and the means must be proportionate.
It is not necessary to treat dandruff by chopping off the head or scalping.
The goal must justify the means that were spent to achieve it, and the means must correspond to the goal. But the paradox of the situation is that very often ends themselves become means to achieve later or higher ends.
The chain of transformations of goals into means can be very long and it rests on the highest goal to which a particular person dedicates his life. This is the purpose of life. To achieve this goal, a person is ready to use any means that his morality or conscience does not forbid him, even his life.
I return to the idea that there are no immoral means. There are people whose morality allows the use of certain means. For them, these means are moral. The Nazis considered moral mass destruction of people.
The killer considers it moral to kill another person for profit.

Each person has their own set of values.
A person will never sacrifice his highest value to achieve the lowest, and vice versa, the lowest values ​​are easily sacrificed to achieve the highest. A society is the stronger and more stable the more people in it with the same or very close scale of values, and the highest value of these people is the public good. They often try to impose a Western scale of values ​​on us. Human life is declared the highest value of this scale.
Who will object to this value.
To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, I will define this value as the absence of human suffering.
Let's analyze these two values.
Human life is a higher value, so human suffering is permissible to preserve it.
But to eliminate human suffering, it is unacceptable to sacrifice human lives. What do we see in the world around us?
It turns out that in the name of democracy, you can kill other people. To free people from the suffering of tyranny, they can be bombed. To establish a market economy, millions of people can be made to suffer. So it turns out that the highest goal should still be the public good, which includes both the preservation of human life and the elimination of the causes of human suffering.

The main justification for any goal should be its social significance. A person cannot exist outside of society; he needs public recognition. And what determines the social significance of a particular goal? Public good or morality. It is by this criterion that society evaluates the activity of a particular person.
And our expression becomes this: the end justifies any means that lead to the achievement of this end, if this end is moral.

The goal of human life is moral and intellectual self-improvement, because only a highly developed moral and intellectual person can determine what the goal of life is.

There is a very important function in the life of society that uses people as a means. This is management. Any control.
The manager uses the means to achieve the goal of management. One of the means is the labor of subordinates. And what is labor if not a particle of human life? By the way, both capital and land also include the labor of people. It turns out that the manager indirectly uses the lives of his subordinates. And not always indirectly. The miners, extracting coal, pay for it with their lives, and the managers do nothing to save these lives. On the contrary, there are cases when managers deliberately ignore safety requirements in order to increase coal production.
If miners have the moral right to risk their lives, then leaders do not have the moral right to risk other people's lives. A moral goal cannot be achieved by immoral means.

And here we are back to terrorism.
It is impossible to defeat a person who is ready to sacrifice his life for the good of other people.
You can convince him to abandon terrorist methods of struggle only by offering an alternative. Terrorism, as a means, becomes immoral if there are other means to achieve a specific goal.
In this case, terrorism can only be defeated by the destruction of society, which in turn is terrorism.

End justifies the means- an old expression that justifies any means to achieve the goal.

The expression is one of the mottos of the Jesuit order and was formulated by the Jesuit Escobar y Mendoza (Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, 1589 - 1669): Finis sanctiflcat media (Finis sanctificat media, lat).

The expression is the basis of the morality of the Jesuits and was included in the book "The Book of Moral Theology" (lat. Liber theologiae moralis, 1644). For example, the Jesuit Pater Hermann Busenbaum (eng. Hermann Busenbaum (Busembaum); 1600 - 1668) in his essay "Fundamentals of Moral Theology" (1645) wrote:

"To whom the end is permitted, the means are also permitted."

It is possible that this idea was borrowed by the Jesuits from the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), who in his book On the Citizen (1642) wrote:

“Since to whom the right to apply the necessary means is useless, and the right to strive for the goal, it follows from this that since everyone has the right to self-preservation, then everyone has the right to use all means and perform any deed, without which he is not able to protect yourself."

The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal in his Letters to a Provincial put the words into the mouth of a Jesuit:

"We correct the depravity of the means by the purity of the end."

Sometimes the phrase "The end justifies the means" is mistakenly attributed to the Italian thinker, historian and statesman Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 - 1527).

The phrase "The end justifies the means" was often used by the Russian revolutionary Sergey Gennadievich Nechaev (1847 - 1882), which contributed to its spread in Russia.

The phrase "The end justifies the means" in foreign languages:

Finis sanctiflcat media (lat.)

The end justifies the means.

Il fine giustifica i mezzi (Italian)

La fin justifie les moyens (French)

El fin justifica los medios (Spanish)

Examples

(1844 - 1927)

"Memories of the Case of Vera Zasulich" (1904 - 1906) - From the speech of the Prosecutor, Comrade Prosecutor K.I. Kessel:

"Therefore, it remains to assume only one thing: it means, according to Zasulich, end justifies the means, the flag covers the cargo".

(1818 - 1883)

"Correspondence", 10:

Some Jesuits say that every means is good as long as it reaches the end. Not true! Not true! With feet defiled by the dirt of the road, it is unworthy to enter a clean temple."

(1823 - 1886)

"Courage is born in struggle":

“And everywhere and everywhere, the only aspirations that guided the young man of the bourgeoisie were money, the thirst for power as a means for exploitation, for profit. And in the struggle for this, all means were good. Meanness, betrayal, and where there was a knife, everything was put into action . The end justified the means."

(1860 - 1904)

"" (1885) - one of the actors who found a lot of money together, talks about killing friends in order to get the whole amount:

“I’ll take it and put poison in vodka. They will die, but in return there will be a theater in Kostroma, which Russia has not yet known. Someone, it seems, MacMahon, said that end justifies the means and MacMahon was a great man."

1. On Stalin's trips, the security guard Tukov often accompanied him. He sat in the front seat next to the driver and used to fall asleep on the way. One of the members of the Politburo, who was riding with Stalin in the back seat, asked:
- Comrade Stalin, I don't understand which of you is guarding whom?
- What is it, - answered Iosif Vissarionovich, - he also put his pistol in my raincoat - take it, they say, just in case!

2. Once Stalin was informed that Marshal Rokossovsky had a mistress - the famous beauty actress Valentina Serova. What are we going to do with them now? Stalin took the pipe out of his mouth, thought a little and said:
- What will we, what will we ... we will envy!

3. Stalin walked with the first secretary of the Central Committee of Georgia, A.I. Mgeladze, along the alleys of the Kuntsevo dacha and treated him to lemons, which he himself had grown in his lemongrass:
- Try, here, near Moscow, grew up!
And so several times, between conversations on other topics:
- Try good lemons!
Finally, it dawned on the interlocutor:
- Comrade Stalin, I promise you that in seven years Georgia will provide the country with lemons, and we will not import them from abroad.
- Thank God, I figured it out! Stalin said.

4. At the negotiations there were disputes about post-war borders, and Churchill said:
- But Lviv has never been a Russian city!
- And Warsaw was, - objected Stalin.

5. When deciding what to do with the German navy, Stalin proposed to divide, and Churchill made a counter proposal: "Sink".
Stalin replied: "Here you are drowning your half."

6. US Ambassador William Averell Harriman at the Potsdam Conference asked Stalin:
- After the Germans were 18 km from Moscow in 1941, you are probably now pleased to share the defeated Berlin?
“Tsar Alexander reached Paris,” Stalin replied.

7. During the war, the troops under the command of Baghramyan were the first to reach the Baltic. The general personally poured water from the Baltic Sea into a bottle and ordered his adjutant to fly with it to Moscow to see Stalin. But while he was flying, the Germans counterattacked and threw Baghramyan away from the Baltic coast. By the time the adjutant arrived in Moscow, they were already aware of this, but the adjutant himself did not know: there was no radio on the plane. And so the proud adjutant entered Stalin's office and proudly reported:
- Comrade Stalin, General Bagramyan is sending you Baltic water!
Stalin took the bottle, turned it over in his hands for a few seconds, then gave it back to the adjutant and replied:
- Give it back to Bagramyan, tell him to pour it where he took it.

8. Various people who happened to watch films with Stalin told me many episodes on this topic. Here is one of them.
In 1939, they watched The Train Goes East. The film is not so hot: a train rides, stops ...
- What station is this? Stalin asked.
- Demyanovka.
“That's where I'll get off,” Stalin said and left the hall.

9. When developing the Pobeda car, it was planned that the car would be called Rodina. Upon learning of this, Stalin ironically asked: “Well, how much will our Motherland be?” The name of the car was immediately changed.

10. The director of one of the mines, Zasyadko, was proposed for the post of Minister of the Coal Industry. Someone objected: “Everything is fine, but he abuses alcohol!” Stalin ordered to invite Zasiadko to his place.
Stalin began to talk to him and offered him a drink.
- With pleasure, - said Zasyadko, poured a glass of vodka: - To your health, Comrade Stalin! - drank and continued the conversation.
Stalin took a sip and, carefully observing, offered the second one. Zasyadko drank the second glass - and not in one eye. Stalin offered a third, but Zasiadko pushed his glass aside and said:
- Zasyadko knows the measure.
At a meeting of the Politburo, when the question of the candidacy of the minister again arose and the abuse of alcohol by the proposed candidate was again announced, Stalin, walking around with a pipe, said:
- Zasyadko knows the measure!
For many years Zasyadko headed our coal industry.

11. Once, a colonel general turned to Stalin with a personal request.
Yes, I have a personal question. In Germany, I took away some things that interested me, but they were detained at the checkpoint. If possible, I would ask them to be returned to me,” he said.
- It's possible. Write a report, I will impose a resolution, - Stalin answered.
The colonel-general pulled out a prepared report from his pocket. Stalin imposed a resolution. The petitioner began to express his gratitude.
“No thanks,” Stalin remarked.
After reading the resolution written on the report: “Return his junk to the colonel. I. Stalin, ”the general turned to the Supreme:
- That's a mistake, Comrade Stalin. I'm not a colonel, but a colonel general.
“No, everything is correct here, Comrade Colonel,” Stalin replied.

12. Admiral I. Isakov since 1938 was the Deputy People's Commissar of the Navy. In 1946, Stalin called him and said that there was an opinion to appoint him chief of the Main Naval Staff, which was renamed the Main Headquarters of the Navy that year.
Isakov replied:
- Comrade Stalin, I must report to you that I have a serious shortcoming: one leg has been amputated.
- Is this the only shortcoming that you consider necessary to report? - the question followed.
"Yes," the Admiral confirmed.
- We used to have a chief of staff without a head. Nothing worked. You just don’t have a leg - it’s not scary, ”Stalin concluded.

13. In the first post-war year, Minister of Finance A. Zverev, concerned about the high fees of a number of major writers, prepared an appropriate memorandum and submitted it to Stalin.
- So, it turns out that we have millionaire writers? Sounds terrible, comrade Zverev? Millionaire Writers! - Stalin asked Zverev, calling him to him.
“Terrible, Comrade Stalin, terrible,” the minister confirmed.
Stalin handed the financier a folder with a note he had prepared: “It's terrible, Comrade Zverev, that we have so few millionaire writers! Writers are the memory of the nation. And what will they write if they live from hand to mouth?

14. In the autumn of 1936, a rumor spread in the West that Joseph Stalin had died of a serious illness. Charles Nitter, a correspondent for the Associated Press news agency, went to the Kremlin, where he delivered a letter to Stalin asking him to confirm or deny this rumor.
Stalin answered the journalist immediately: “Dear sir! As far as I know from the reports of the foreign press, I left this sinful world long ago and moved to the other world. Since it is impossible not to trust the reports of the foreign press, if you do not want to be crossed out from the list of civilized people, then I ask you to believe these reports and not disturb my peace in the silence of the other world.
October 26, 1936. Sincerely, I. Stalin.

15. Once foreign correspondents asked Stalin:
- Why is Mount Ararat depicted on the coat of arms of Armenia, because it is not located on the territory of Armenia?
Stalin replied:
- The crescent moon is depicted on the coat of arms of Turkey, but it is also not located on the territory of Turkey.

16. A new production of Glinka's opera Ivan Susanin was being prepared at the Bolshoi Theater. The members of the commission, headed by chairman Bolshakov, listened and decided that it was necessary to remove the finale “Glory to the Russian people!”: Churchness, patriarchalism ...
Reported to Stalin.
“But we will act differently: we will leave the finale, and we will remove Bolshakov,” he replied.