Contemporary Moral Issues

It's fun to clean out the old accumulated files because I come across some little treasure that I don't really remember collecting. I found a page that causes me to reflect on my current actions, on the choices I make, and the consequences they have. Here is the text of that single page:

Philosophy 145 Contemporary Moral Issues
C. Love

(Ivan to Alyosha:)

"...Tell me yourself, I challenge you -- answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly....

-- from Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov, C. Garnett, translator, Book V, Chap. 4 (New York, Modern Library, 1950)

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