Critque Perils of ObedienceJoin now to read essay Critque Perils of ObedienceIn “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obeying immoral commands given by authority and refusing authority. The experiment was to see how much pain a normal person would inflict on another person because he/she were being ordered to do so by a scientist. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher was the real subject and the learner was an actor. In almost all case the teacher would shock the student to the assumed point of death and in one case a teacher laughed while administering the shock. This leads to the conclusion that everyone has an innate aggression that manifest with the opportunity arises.
When the circumstances of the experiment were changed, and the teacher could choose the level of shock administered to the learner the results were drastically different. The teacher’s hardly ever went beyond the minimum pain threshold. The only difference was the presence of the authority figure. This shows that people find it easier to disregard morals when ordered to do so by authority, this also allows for a scapegoat for the responsibility. It is almost as though the progress of the student is completely forgotten, and the teacher becomes annoyed with the students continuing to shock them as instructed. The conclusion derived from these experiments is that under special circumstances authority figures can transform ordinary people into “agents of terror.”
The essay and experiment were an accurate representation of human behavior and how it is affected by authority. It is clearly shown when the difference in people’s malicious behavior when shocking the students in the presence of authority and when given the freedom to choose the level of shock. The thesis of Milgram’s essay was that obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency; indeed, a potent impulse overriding reining ethics, sympathy and moral conduct is right on the dot. He also discusses the extreme willingness of man to obey authority at any length. This shows that “ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive
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Conclusion:
The most interesting and interesting of Milgram’s works is his study of “moral agency,” which is an idea he and his fellow professors called “the moral agent of action.” Milgram, however, thinks that the question is very different from the one that arises during his work with the group “free-thinkers” as he described it. To understand what kind of agency Milgram might want in the work of such individuals, one must deal with the various aspects of the ethical theory of moral agency. The main aim of the analysis will be to demonstrate, among other things, how we are to think about what kind of moral agency is needed for the practical activities of the group in order to avoid the pitfalls and inconsistencies of a free-form morality. The book provides a unique chance to go through the basics of moral agency, how to think, and which forms would be most appropriate after the present analysis.
A major aspect of this analysis might be found in his analysis of the ethical implications, or as he puts it, “what is the most important moral action we can take if we’re not free of moral responsibility to ourselves”? In my view, a moral agent of action is a free-thinker if he has a free will to obey authority and is unable to turn such a thinking and behavior toward the objective goal of his own self-interest’(4). If the main focus is on moral agency, it is important to show how moral agency and free enterprise can contribute to a more constructive model of human action than Milgram does.
The study of the ethical system of moral agency has been conducted in a number of different forms. During the 1980s it was also part of the project of the International Monetary Fund to develop a basic version of the morality of free enterprise and to consider the possibility of making that version of moral agency available at all times. This was supported by the fact that since 1989, the U.S. State Department has received more federal funding than any other country, not just in monetary terms but also in terms of social policies. In 1993, when The University of Illinois Institute for Economic Affairs sponsored a study of the role of free-market ideas in political activities, the U.S. Department of Finance provided a grant of $10,000 to the project, which was extended only to those funds for work on the social sciences. The international organization’s research was limited by the fact that the study is in effect intended as a “public” survey (9, 20). It would be interesting to discover whether some of the proposals for the study at this time were implemented, and whether that policy is reflected in the proposed study which will be published as part of Open Access to Munk’s book.