The Nature Of Authority In A Few Good Men

This leads Kaffee to defend his clients on the basis on which they simply followed orders from a higher ranking officer, Colonel Jessup (Reiner). According to Milgram’s experiments, even normal, harmless people are able to inflict pain on another individual. The military is based on a chain of command, the Colonel at the top, Privates at the bottom, and everyone else in between. Milgram argues that, when in problematic circumstances, people are proud of doing a good job for their authority (Milgram 221). In other words, they want to obey the orders given in order to please the person holding authority. Could this explain why Dawson and Downey executed the “Code Red”? This is precisely similar to the argument Kelman and Hamilton present in their article “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience”. According to these authors, “American military law assumes that the subordinate is inclined to follow orders…” (Kelman, Hamilton 270). The soldiers in My Lai, although possibly interpreting the orders differently than intended, ultimately did what their commanding officer ordered. The Marines in the film may have also been under the impression that they would not be responsible for any harm which Santiago may endure. Again, Milgram could attest to this argument. He states, “The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards

When we talk about someone being in a position of authority we usually mean that they hold a certain rank or status within society or within an organisation such as the public services. There are several ways in which a person could find himself or herself in a position of authority. For example, a priest has the authority of the church while a mother or father has parental authority over children. In the uniformed public services, positions of authority come with promotion. An officer may be promoted because of certain achievements and special attributes, such as experience in the service, good character, knowledge of the job, dedication, self-discipline and the respect of one’s colleagues. If you join the uniformed public services and are placed in a position of authority, you may lawfully command team members, who recognise your authority and their duty to obey those legitimate commands. When authority is legitimate, there is no need to influence or use power. Indeed, if a senior officer were unable to gain the respect of a team member by command alone, then there would be no recognisable authority.

A private office meeting is ordered by Col. Jessep between him, Lt. Jonathan Kendrick, and Lt. Col. Matthew Andrew Markinson to discuss the Santiago situation. After a few brief words among the three, Jessep makes his authority known by ordering Kendrick to train Santiago, while threatening to kill him if Santiago is not well prepared. With Markinson having noticeable doubts about Jessep’s command, the colonel orders a private meeting alone with Markinson. By starting the conversation off soberly, Jessep asks Markinson what he thinks of Kendrick. Markinson replies by saying his opinion does not account for much. Jessep then proceeds to explain his reasoning for having Santiago stay on the base. With a self conceited tone, Jessep begins reminiscing on his and Markinson’s life together, and ends the conversation on a selfish note, saying that he had been more successful than Markinson and that any feeling of tension and embarrassment had no importance to him. Jessep shows his true malevolence in this scene, while directing it towards Markinson and Kendrick. Milgram confers his opinion on the presence of authority when he says, “The experimenter’s physical presence has marked impact on his authority” (223). Milgram states that without

Kendrick’s orders, they are to blame and not Lance Corp. Dawson and Pfc. Downey, thus it is manslaughter. Secondly, Lance Corp. Dawson and Pfc. Downey are not guilty for conspiracy to commit murder. Lance Corp. Dawson and Pfc. Downey were not the people who planned the assault of Pfc. Santiago; it was Lt. Kendrick and Colonel Jessop who planned the attack of Pfc. Santiago. Thus the charge should be applied to Colonel Jessop and Lt. Kendrick. But the original intended act was for Pfc. Santiago to be injured, but not for him to die, so it would be Conspiracy to Commit Assault. Lastly, Lance Corp. Dawson and Pfc. Downey are not guilty of Conduct Unbecoming a United States Marine. Lance Corp. Dawson and Pfc. Downey followed orders from a higher ranking officer, which is a must in the marines. Lance Corp. Dawson was threatened to follow orders a little before the incident of Pfc. Santiago’s death, were Lance Corp. Dawson fed a starving Pfc. Santiago, contrary to what Lt. Kendrick’s order’s said. As a result, Lance Corp. Dawson received a poor grade for that week. Due to obedience, Lance Corp. Dawson and

The concept of good and evil is a popular dichotomy found in many fields such as religion, philosophy, and psychology. Philosophers continue to ask the question whether human beings are innately good or evil and often state that human nature is much greater in complexity on the scale of human behaviour. It is important to define what good and evil is, understanding the complexity of human behaviour and applying personal experiences relating to the topic. As to question whether humans are innately good or evil can be a misleading concept which can lead to conflicts.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, “The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Every indivdual has the decision between good and evil. Not every person will choose the right side of the line. When an indivdual crosses over the line to the evil side this is known as The Lucifer Effect. Philip Zimbardo, the individual that coined the idea, presented the ideas behind why people change and turn evil even if though their whole life they were not known as an evil person. According to Zimbardo, people turn evil for one of two reasons; The Lucifer Effect and the seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil (TED Talks).

A curious fact that we have realized as we browsed many scholarly dictionaries and encyclopedias (we will list them in our bibliography) for a sophisticated definition of the word authority is that this word recurs more than once especially in entries related to classical and Renaissance philosophy. The question of authority, therefore, is central to a long theoretical and philosophical debate. As a matter of course, our interest should seem very broad. However, it is self-defeating to attempt to cover so large theoretical and historical grounds. This is why we opted for confining ourselves to the question of authority as a question in relation to Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet.

Zimbardo’s purpose of this novel is to illuminate the idea of how easy it is to give in to the temptation of evil. A great number of our societies individuals moral views are based on their religion which make them very narrow minded to the topic of temptation of evil. Zimbardo tries to open people’s mind to make them see how evil may not be born into an individual but created from the environment they are in. Philip Zimbardo uses a section of the book to speak about his famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” which supported his thesis of evil being created through the individual's

A dispute between A Few Good Men can lead a simple murder case to spiral out of control, is it just a simple murder or perhaps ethical conduct.  Portraying  Aristotle’s six elements A Few Good Men is a nail biting, suspenseful, sociological thriller which entails a plot summary of a sophisticated case covered by a series of lies sets up to blame two marines whose lives are at the expense of a rookie lawyer. Director Rob Reiner did a phenomenal job showcasing Aristotle’s six elements of drama, in this film Reiner imputes: Plot, Theme, Character, Spectacle, Language, and Rhythm. Reiner uses spectacle( the visual element of the production of the play) throughout the movie displaying a

Authority represents the power that lies within a managerial position and that gives the manager the right to assign the jobs to his subordinates and to expect that the assigned jobs would be completed by the subordinates. By the virtue of authority, the superiors are empowered to make their juniors and subordinates work. The organizational structure should clearly define the line of authority so that the overlapping actions might be avoided (Mahida).

In reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, one is struck by the two major political education ideals described in the book: the Spartan regime, praised by the Lacedaemonian king Archidamus, and the Athenian ideal, supported by Pericles, the Athenian ruler. Socrates discusses both of these regimes in Plato’s Republic in an attempt to make a statement about what constitutes true and effective education. After close analysis, it is clear that Socrates does not support either educational ideal. Instead, Socrates rejects both regimes—the Athenian because it has no real guidance and thus cannot produce wise and just people, and the Spartan because despite all its rigidity, it still does not truly train people to be wise and just. In

Evil has always been a dilemma in every society, which could have been provoked by many different things in the ideas of biology, psychology and sociology. Studying in these three different sections, we could discover reasons behind every sense of how evil was developed in a human being.

Taylor speaks about the mistake people often make in assuming people are “innately” good or bad. The overwhelming theme of the article is the fluidity of good and evil, that people are good or evil at different points in their lives. He condemns the attitude of the justice system, which imprisons criminals because they are ‘bad’ and can’t be rehabilitated. Taylor writes that it has been shown that criminals who are thought to be ‘bad’ can be rehabilitated to be ‘good’ and show empathetic actions. He also says that instead of evil being innate, it’s actually caused by “environmental factors.” Taylor describes the epitome of what is perceived as good as Mahatma Gandhi and the epitome of evil as Adolf Hitler, but states that most people lie in the middle, ready to tilt either way, as is human nature. Humans are not created good or evil; they are a blank slate colored in by what they experience. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll releases the urges shunned in his childhood and because he was taught to only be ‘good’ as a child, he was all the more ‘bad’. Steven Taylor’s article in Psychology Today shows good examples of the fluidity of good and

The Chinese concept of Yin and Yang shows how opposite dualities are interconnected and mutually dependant in the natural world. Take the coexistence of good and evil, for example, and you will find that within us all is the source of each.Having the potential to be both good and evil is part of our human nature. As humans we cannot be perfect, because inherent evil is something that will always be part of humanity. Throughout time, a variety of texts and film have been able to give us the greatest insight into who we are today. This universal topic has been observed and contemplated by religions such as Christianity, great philosophers such as Augustine, authors such as William Shakespeare in his play ‘Othello’ and directors such as Christopher Nolan in his film ‘The Dark Knight’. We are able to realize that humanity’s inherent evil is in fact something that lies within all of us. Of course, most individuals are not entirely evil. These different references make us consider the potential for evil, that history has demonstrated, is prevalent in human nature.

Life is a mystery. There is so much that we do not understand and so much we have yet to learn. Many questions we ponder frequently involve human nature. We often ask why people do certain things and why we act the way we do. Most of these highly debated topics will never be answered. We can only contemplate why everything occurs. One issue that is consistently brought up is that of good and evil. For centuries this subject has been disputed and countless theories have been created to try and solve this difficult puzzle. Are humans good or evil? That is the perplexing question that has stumped philosophers and writers for a very long time. There are certainly good people in this world, but at the same time there