Batman kills Darkseid. Ethical?

[The Nihilist]

Please only comment in this thread if you've read Final Crisis. If you want to play, go read Final Crisis. It is extraordinarily complicated and can't really be explained here.

Did Batman betray everything he's ever stood for by capping Darkseid? Was it ethical to have done?

 

[TeddyKGB]

I haven't read the source material, but I think a case can be made that generalist, absolutist ethical systems like "I will not kill anyone ever for any reason" are not themselves particularly ethical.

 

[Ryal Kane]

Faced with an incredibly powerful and unrepentantly evil entity on the verge of collapsing the multiverse, I'd saying shooting him was reasonable.

Batman doesn't like using guns but there are cases of him doing so before, when faced with a large superhuman opponent.

Also, even Superman has killed before, executing three kryptonians from a parallel world who had killed billions on earth. With no means of containing them, he chose to kill them and while this had profound effects on him, I still perceive it to be the right choice.

Sure, comic books might have Starlabs or The Vault but consider a meta-human in our world. If someone had power like superman and went rogue, we would have no means of containing him. Death would be the only safe option, however unpallatable.

Absolutes in any moral code risk leading to no win delimnas. There has to be an element of flexibility.