How Far Will You Go To Save Someone?

In I am Legend 90% of humanity become zombies after a measles virus that was meant to cure cancer become a lethal strain.  Lieutenant Robert Neville is the last human in New York who during the evacuation of the city due to the outbreak lost his wife and daughter in a helicopter accident.  During the night is when the Darkseekers come out to prey on anything that is immune to the virus, they cannot detect Neville who is boarded up in a townhouse because he always cover his track with some chemical.  During the night Neville is trying to find a serum to cure the infected people, he does manage to get a hold of a woman who is infected and test the serums on her which do not work.  One night as he is attacked by a group of zombies he is saved by a woman named Anna and her son Ethan who are not infected by the virus.  They take Neville back to his apartment where they are explaining to him that there is a survivor camp in VT.  Neville does not believe that there is such a place because he thought that he was the only living person left. The following night a leader of the zombies lead a attack on Neville house where he, Anna, and her son are trapped in the glass room of the laboratory where the infected woman lays on the operating table, ironically the last dosage of serum that he injected into the woman seems to be working.  As the zombies are breaking the glass and trying to make their way into the room, Neville take a vial of the woman's blood and give it to Anna.  He then push her and her son out into a coal chute in the lab the detonated a grenade that blows up him and the zombies, while Anna and her son makes their way to VT.

 

Kantian would say that Neville's actions were justified because he was his "DUTY, seeking to do what is right because it is right, and not from self-interest or sympathy".  His duty was to find a serum to cure the virus and the only way that it was possible at that moment was to give it to Anna and stop her from being attacked by the zombies so that she could give it to scientist.  Kantian would also say that "whether one has a duty to someone else depends not on the other's rights, as it does on a rights-based theory, but on the rational assessment of what is the right thing to do based on the various types of relationship that you have with the person.  Even though Neville and Anna just met, Anna had a son that was a little older than his daughter that died. This is what motivated him in

finding a serum and getting it out to others, by killing his self because of the family that he lost and so that other families would not go through the same thing that he went through.  This was a rational, and logical idea for him to

do.

 

Utilitarianism would also agree with Neville's actions due to him losing his family during this crisis.  Utilitarianism states "the benefit of the whole requires self-sacrifice, especially for those able to substantially impact the benefits that others receive".  Because he lost his family he would not want other families to experience the same pain that

he has by having nothing left, that is why he made it a point to continue to do research and test different serums.  Giving the serum to Anna so that she could get it out to save others utilitarianism stated "primates are likely to protect their group members, even to their own detriment, promoting the group's evolutionary survival over the individuals survival". 

I think that Neville did what he had to do, I however cannot say that I would do the same until I am placed in a situation like that which will go completely different because 1.) I am not a scientist and cannot concoct up any serums, 2.) I have not survival skills, so fair to say I would probably be a Darkseeker and my god I hope that it never comes to that.  I think that both Kantian and Utilitarian is correct because there are people out there who would out their selves out there and risk their lives for others.

Salazar, Heather. "Self-Interest," The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Series on Ethics and Morality, ed. by Robert Fastiggi. Gale Cengage Learning, 2013

Salazar, Heather. "Kantian Business Ethics," in Business in Ethical Focus, ed. Fritz Allhoff and Anand J. Vaidya. Broadview Press, 2008