When survival becomes the ultimate end it legitimates any means and erases moral scruples.
Evidence
The higher climbed the price of life, the lower tumbled the price of betrayal. An irresistible compulsion to live pushed aside moral scruples and, with them, human dignity. Amidst the universal scramble for survival, the value of self-preservation was enthroned as an uncontestable legitimation of choice. Everything that served the self-preservation was right. With the ultimate end at stake, all means seemed to be justified. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 415
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The coldly analytic ‘legitimation of choice’ framing — how extremity converts self-preservation into an unchallengeable moral foundation.
- XREF: connects to: Extreme circumstances can force survivors to abandon their former morals
Related
- Evil can be resisted because self-preservation remains a choice. (similarity 0.80)
- Survival under extremity can require moral transformation (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Extreme circumstances can force survivors to abandon their former morals
#corroborates(0.92)