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Ethical Issues In The Dark Knight

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Ethics is portrayed as the understanding of what people really ought to be doing, not what people are doing and why. To apply moral ethical concepts and reflections to the modern society, we will focus on the movie The Dark Knight. In the city of Gotham, Batman emerges to protect its civilians and to bring justice to those unable to follow its moral principles and laws. Viewed by some as the protector of the innocent and by others as a rampaging vigilante on a path of destruction, he continues to fight those in need of correction. When taking into consideration the contrast of Batman as a bringer of peace and Batman as a wild vigilante, one must determine the definition and comparison of justice and law. As justice being the action of retribution …show more content…

Throughout the movie we see a trail of destruction left by Batman’s chase of evil. He constantly breaks laws, endangers the lives of innocent bystanders, and uses his seemingly endless wealth to parade through the city of Gotham with destruction in his wake. One must consider if his moral values outweigh Gotham’s moral principles and law. Does the pursuit of evil justify the millions of dollars in wreckage left by his careless actions? Does justice outweigh the law? In a sense, Batman believes that his actions are justified because much more severe destruction can occur if the evil is not stopped. We take into consideration the actions of the Joker. His devious plans constantly test the moral values and principles of Batman and the people of Gotham. When straining the boat passengers to choose which boat survives, he pushes the people to the limit of their moral values. The people on the boats are forced to evaluate the limit of their values and decide if the action they perform can be justified as right or wrong. In doing so, he reveals that the subjective moral basis of humans is dependent on the situation at hand. Whether they decide to destroy one boat or have both boats destroyed, they personally are left to choose what they believe is correct. With a situation like this in which the people must choose the right thing to do, the Joker unravels that moral disagreements are impossible because each person on the boat is basing the decision off their own values and each person considers themselves right, thus causing the intended chaos. When observing both of the boats in a separate manner, we can conclude that one is filled with civilians and one is filled with prisoners and their guards. We can theoretically presume that each of the boats have their own “culture”, one of the civilian mind and one of the prisoner/ guard mind. It would be incorrect to assume the position of a cultural relativist in deducing that

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