Abstract

Various disasters have been affecting our societies for the last few decades, ranging from earthquakes, floods and tsunamis to economic crises, terrorism and migration. When a disaster strikes, it upsets the normal way of life of the society and leaves behind hundreds of thousands of victims and casualties. The questions that arise automatically are first, how one is going to conceive and understand the disasters that occur and, secondly, in what way one is going to intervene, especially after these disasters have struck, and help those affected and injured. What obviously concerns us here is to track down the ethical account which will enable us to consider the disaster theoretically and will guide us to intervene on the field when the actual disaster has occurred. A number of different ethical approaches to dealing with disasters have been propounded by philosophers, among which are notably two, utilitarianism and Kant’s deontology. However, even though these two ethical theories seem to be the “ideal” theories for dealing with the problematic situations arising from disasters, it is argued that they are not ideal at all, as they overlook and do not take into account the particular features of the problematic situations and the feelings of both, the victims and the workers. However, on a more careful examination, it turns out that Kant’s deontological account is not just the formal distanced ethical theory that first appears to be. It also possesses an empirical account, the ethical account of virtues, which can be directly applied to the problems caused by disasters in the real world. Especially, by presenting us with an elaborate analysis of the duty of justice and the duty of beneficence, Kant succeeds in bringing out the practical relevance that his theory of virtues has for disasters.