Murtaza Ibrahimi

Professor Reynolds
PHL 230 (Introduction to Ethics)
Assignment #2
November 13th, 2019

To escape or not escape?

Have you ever been treated unfairly? Assume for a while that you are living in one of the

insecure areas in Kabul city and one day in the early morning on your way to office you face

with a wounded man immersed in blood while you have no idea what has happened to him; you,

however, want to get him to the hospital. Concurrently, he dies while the police also arrive in the

area, and find you with a dead man. After the trial, you are sentenced to life imprisonment in

charge of murder. Now, for the sake of reality, consider the real case of Socrates who refused to

escape from prison and complied with the verdict of his death penalty. Some people praise

Socrates’s decision while some do not. Such situations raise a controversial moral question of

whether the victim should escape from prison or not. In this paper, I would argue that a person

should not escape from prison in such situations for the reasons that, first, it is breaking the law

and, besides, it is a wrong action to take.

First, if a person escapes from prison in contrast to the law, he/she deliberately violate it.

The law and rules in society make the basis of an implicitly accepted-agreement which is called

the social contract between a country’s citizens and its state. Hobbes describes a society without

a social contract as the state of nature where there is no law and rule to adjust the people’s

behaviors based on a pre-defined limit and frame; he, further, states that in such societies the

weakest members will perish while, on the other hand, the strongest members will survive

(McCartney, S. & Parent, R., n.d.) To that end, the social contract between the people of a

country and its state is to ensure that all the people act based on the public-accepted laws and
rules, like a country’s constitution, to provide a safe and organized living condition for everyone

both equally and fairly. Moreover, as Kant in his deontology-based ethical theory of ‘Categorical

Imperative’ states, one should only act on that maxim which wants to see as a universal law

(Johnson, R. & Cureton, A., 2016). No wise individual, consequently, wants the action of

breaking the law and rules to be a universal law as they know that it will end the organized way

of living in society. Thus, escaping from prison because of an unjust judgment done by only a

few people is a violation of the entire social contract and would be a wrong action to take since it

ruins the whole society after which everyone would judge their actions personally based on their

personal point of views and one-sided benefits.

However, to avoid misjudgments and unjust treatments, most of the modern national and

international laws give people the right to raise their voice and express their disagreement if they

are not satisfied with the result of a judgment by a judicial system and ask for an appeal. To

illustrate, there are three sequential courts in the judicial system of Afghanistan which are the

primary, appeals, and the supreme courts where the accuser can reject the sentence of the

primary court and refer to the appeals court and also the supreme court-if not stratifies with the

judgment of the appeals court (“Structure of judicial system”, n.d.). For instance, Abdul Razaq

Wahidy, a former Afghan minister, who was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in January

2019 by the primary court in accusation of the misuse of authority and graft, was acquitted by an

appeals court in July 2019 (“Former Minister of Communication & IT acquitted by an appeals

court”, July 21, 2019). A person, therefore, should not escape from prison as it is breaking the

laws and rules that he/she has accepted to abide by in order to take part in the creation of a safe

and organized society; instead, he/she should look for attaining their right and what they deserve

by referring back to the laws and rules.

 Moreover, the action of escaping from prison, even if a person has been judged or treated

unjustly is a wrong action to do according to virtue-based ethics. According to Aristotle, every

object has a function and purpose which he calls it telos and fulfilling that telos makes that thing

good (Dimmock, M. & Fisher, A., 2017). For instance, the purpose of humans by making a

camera is to capture photos and record videos, and if the camera they make fulfills the function

of capturing photos and recording videos, it would be a good camera and a bad camera if it does

not. Moreover, based on virtue ethics, the telos of a human is living a good life and Aristotle

describes eudemonia, which means growing and flourishing, as the state which a person attains if

he/she achieves a good life (Dimmock, M. & Fisher, A. 2017). A virtuous person, therefore,

always takes the actions which enable him/her to fulfill the telos of living a good life as human-

which we can say also a eudaimon life; and avoids taking the action which is focused more on

the action itself or its outcome rather than the moral character and trait of him/herself. For

instance, if the students cheat on an exam to score higher marks and, finally, better grades, they

break their moral character of not cheating and, concurrently, the action moves them away from

their telos of living a good life. Thus, escaping from prison is a wrong action to take for the

reasons that a person does not fulfill his/her telos of living a good life by breaking his/her moral

character in favor of the action’s outcome. A person, therefore, should not escape from prison as

it is a wrong action in virtue ethics since it goes against the telos of living a good life.

In the meantime, there might be opposition to the mentioned arguments especially from the

consequentialists who only consider the outcome of action as a criterion to determine whether it

is wrong or right (Dimmock, M. & Fisher, A., 2017). A consequentialist sees escaping from

prison in such situations as a right action to take maybe for the reasons that, first it would result

in releasement of an innocent person who is in the prison because of an unjust judgment and,
second, the escape of such a person from prison is not breaking a law but an unfair law.

However, based on Plato’s theory of soul, a person breaks his/her soul by breaking the law and a

social contract by escaping from prison and at the same time encourages others to break their

own as the action would encourage all others to judge themselves personally innocent and escape

from prison (“Plato’s Theory of Soul”, August 10, 2018). As a result of the wrong action of

escaping from prison and breaking the law and social contract, an organized society will be

destroyed and chaos will emerge. Instead of escaping from prison and breaking the law,

however, a person can appeal for justice under the laws and rules.

To sum up, I believe that a person should not escape from prison based on the

deontology-based and virtue-based ethics for the reasons that, first, a person breaks the law and a

social contract between him/her and the state and community and, secondly, a person takes a

wrong action by escaping from prison as it breaks his/her moral character, soul, and keeps

him/her way from telos of living a good life. Though there are some opposing arguments, none

can vindicate the wrong action of escaping from prison. Hence, taking this paper and the

arguments I made into the account, I would state a person should not escape from prison.
 References

Dimmock, M., & Fisher, A. (2017). Ethics for A-Level. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Former Minister of Communication & IT acquitted in corruption case by appeals court (July 21,

2019). Reporterly. Retrieved from

http://reporterly.net/live/newsfeed/sunday-july

21/former-minister-of-communication-it-acquitted-in-corruption-case-by-appeals-court/

Johnson, R. & Cureton, A. (2016). Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/

McCartney, S. & Parent, R. (n.d.). Ethics in law enforcement. Press Books. Retrieved from

https://opentextbc.ca/ethicsinlawenforcement/chapter/2-9-social-contract-theory/

Mishra, I. N. (August 10, 2018). Plato’s theory of soul. Counter Currents. Retrieved from

https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/platos-theory-of-soul

Structure of judicial system (n.d.). The Supreme Court of Afghanistan. Retrieved from

https://supremecourt.gov.af/en/structure-judicial-system