no producing WGBH Boston asociado Harvard University Wow walkways assert aphasia justice Oh Mikaelson blood Marauder asesina this is a course about justice and we begin with a story suppose you're the driver of a trolley car and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour and at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track you try to stop but you can't your brakes don't work you feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers they will all die let's assume you know that
for sure and so you feel helpless until you notice that there is off to the right a side track and at the end of that track there's one worker working on the track your steering wheel works so you can turn the trolley car if you want to onto the side track killing the one but sparing the five here's our first question what's the right thing to do what would you do let's take a poll how many would turn the trolley car onto the side track raise your hands how many wouldn't how many would go straight
ahead keep your hands up those of you who would go straight ahead a handful of people would the vast majority would turn let's hear first now we need to begin to investigate the reasons why you think it's the right thing to do let's begin with those in the majority who would turn to go onto the side track why would you do it what would be your reason who's willing to volunteer a reason go ahead stand up because it can't be right to kill five people when you can only kill one person instead it wouldn't be
right to kill five if you could kill one person instead that's a good reason that's a good reason who else does everybody agree with that reason go ahead um well asking has the same reason on 9/11 we regard the people who who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field as heroes because they chose to kill the people in the plane and not kill more people in big buildings so the principle there was the same on 9/11 two tragic circumstance but better to kill one and so that five can live is that the reason most of
you had those of you who would turn yes let's hear now from those in the minority those who wouldn't turn yes well I think that's the same type of mentality that justifies genocide and totalitarianism in order to say save one type of race you wipe out the other so what would you do in this case you would to avoid the horrors of genocide you would crash into the five and kill them presumably yes you yeah okay who else it's a brave answer thank you let's consider another trolley car case and see whether those of you
in the majority want to adhere to the principle better that one should die so that five should live this time you're not the driver of the trolley car you're an onlooker you're standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track and down the track comes a trolley car at the end of the track or five workers the brakes don't work the trolley car is about to careen into the five and kill them and now you're not the driver you really feel helpless until you notice standing next to you leaning over the bridge is a very
fat man and you could give him a shove he would fall over the bridge under the track right in the way of the trolley car he would die but he would spare the five now how many would push the fat man over the bridge raise your hand how many wouldn't most people wouldn't here's the obvious question what became of the principle better to save five lives even if it means sacrificing one what became at the principle that almost everyone endorsed in the first case I need to hear from someone who was in the majority in
both cases how do you explain the difference between the two yes the second one I guess involves an active choice of pushing the person down which I guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in a situation at all and so to choose on his behalf I guess to involve him in something that he otherwise would have escaped is I guess more than what you have in the first case were the three parties that the driver and the the two sets of workers are already I guess in the situation but the guy working
the one on the track off to the side he didn't choose to sacrifice his life any more than the fat man did did he that's true but he was on the tracks and you this guy was on the bridge go ahead you can come back if you are alright it's a hard question alright you did well you did very well it's a hard question who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction of the majority in these two cases yes well I guess in the first case where you have the one worker in the
five it's its choice between those two and you have to make certain choice and people are going to die because the trolley car not necessarily because of your direct actions the trolley car is a runaway thing and you're making it a split second choice whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act of murder on your part you have control over that whereas you may not have control over the trolley car so I think it's a slightly different situation all right who has a reply as that is no that's that's good who has a
way who wants to reply is that a way out of this um I don't think that's a very good reason because you choose to it's either way you have to choose who dies because you either choose to turn and kill the person which is an act of conscious thought to turn or you choose to push the fat man over which is also an active conscious action so either way you're making a choice do you want to reply well I'm not really sure if that's the case it just still seems kind of different the act of
actually pushing someone over onto the tracks and killing him you are actually killing him yourself you're pushing it with your own hands you're pushing it and that's different than steering something that is going to cause death into another you know it doesn't really sound right saying it now it's good I'm up here what it's good what's your name Andrew Andrew let me ask you this question Andrew yes suppose standing on the bridge next to the fat man I didn't have to push him suppose he were standing over a trap door that I could open by
turning a steering wheel like would you turn for some reason that still just seems more wrong right I mean maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel or something but or or say that the car is is hurtling towards a switch that will drop the trap then I could agree with that fair enough it still seems wrong in a way that it doesn't seem wrong in the first case to turn you say and in another way I mean in the first situation you're involved directly with the situation in the second one you're an
onlooker as well alright so you have the choice of becoming involved or not bypassing the FATA let's let's forget for the moment about this case that's good let's imagine a different case this time you're a doctor in an emergency room and six patients come to you they've been in a terrible trolley car wreck five of them sustained moderate injuries one is severely injured you could spend all day caring for the one severely injured victim but in that time the five would die or you could look after the five restore them to health but during that
time the one severely injured person would die how many would save the five now is the doctor how many would save the one very few people just a handful of people same reason I assume one life versus five now consider another doctor case this time you're a transplant surgeon and you have five patients each in desperate need of an organ transplant in order to survive one needs a heart when a lung one a kidney one a liver and the fifth a pancreas and you have no organ donors you are about to see them die and
then it occurs to you that in the next room there's a healthy guy who came in for a checkup and he's you like that and if he's taking a nap you could go in very quietly yank out the five organs that person would die but you could save the five how many would do it anyone how many put your hands up if you would do it anyone in the balcony you would be careful don't lean over to me what how many wouldn't all right what do you say speak up in the balcony you who would
yank out the organs why I'd actually like to explore a slightly alternate possibility of just taking the one of the five who needs an organ who dies first using therefore healthy organs to save the other four that's a pretty good idea that's a great idea except for the fact that you just wrecked the philosophical point let's let's step back from these stories and these arguments to notice a couple of things about the way the arguments have begun to unfold certain moral principles have already begun to emerge from the discussions we've had and let's consider what
those moral principles look like the first moral principle that emerged in the discussion said the right thing to do the moral thing to do depends on the consequences that will result from your action at the end of the day better that five should live even if one must die that's an example of consequentialist moral reasoning consequentialist moral reasoning locates morality in the consequences of an act in the state of the world that will result some the thing you do but then we went a little further we considered those other cases and people weren't so sure
about consequentialist moral reasoning when people hesitated to push the fat man over the bridge or to yank out the organs of the innocent patient people gestured toward reasons having to do with the intrinsic quality of the act itself consequences be what they may people were reluctant people thought it was just wrong categorically wrong to kill a person an innocent person even for the sake of saving five lives at least people thought that in the second version of each story we considered so this points to a second categorical way of thinking about moral reasoning categorical moral
reasoning locates morality in certain absolute moral requirements certain categorical duties and rights regardless of the consequences we're going to explore in the days and weeks to come the contrast between consequentialist and categorical moral principles the most influential example of consequential moral reasoning is utilitarianism a doctrine invented by Jeremy Bentham the 18th century English political philosopher the most important philosopher of categorical moral reasoning is the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant so we will look at those two different modes of moral reasoning assess them and also consider others if you look at the syllabus you'll notice
that we read a number of great and famous books books by Aristotle John Locke Immanuel Kant John Stuart Mill and others you'll notice two from the syllabus that we don't only read these books we also take up contemporary political and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions we will debate equality and inequality affirmative action free speech versus hate speech same-sex marriage military conscription a range of practical questions why not just to enliven these abstract and distant books but to make clear to bring out what's at stake in our everyday lives including our political lives for philosophy
and so we will read these books and we will debate these issues and we'll see how each informs and illuminates the other this may sound appealing enough but here I have to issue a warning and the warning is this to read these books in this way as an exercise in self-knowledge to read them in this way carries certain risks risks that are both personal and political risks that every student of political philosophy is known these risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know there's
an irony the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know it works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange that's how those examples work to worked the hypotheticals with which we began with their mix of playfulness and sobriety it's also how these philosophical books work philosophy estranges us from the familiar not by supplying new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing but and here's the risk once the familiar turns strange it's never quite the same again self-knowledge is like
lost innocence however unsettling you find it it can never be unthought or unknown what makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting is that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don't know where the story will lead but what you do know is that the story is about you those are the personal risks now what of the political risks one way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues you will become a better more responsible citizen you will examine the presuppositions of Public
Policy you will hone your political judgment you will become a more effective participant in public affairs but this would be a partial and misleading promise political philosophy for the most part hasn't worked that way you have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one and that's because philosophy is a distancing even debilitating activity and you see this going back to socrates there's a dialogue the gorgias in which one of Socrates's friends kal
achlys tries to talk him out of philosophizing kal achlys tells socrates philosophy is a pretty toy if one indulges in it with moderation at the right time of life but if one pursues it further than one should it is absolute ruin take my advice calculus Eze abandon argument learn the accomplishments of active life take for your models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings so calculus is really saying to fall off to socrates quit philosophizing get real go to
business school and calloc Lee's did have a point he had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions from established assumptions and from settled beliefs those are the risks personal and political and in the face of these risks there is a characteristic evasion the name of the evasion is skepticism it's the idea well it goes something like this we didn't resolve once and for all either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began and if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and mill haven't solved these questions after all of these years who are
we to think that we here in Sanders theater over the course of up and semester can resolve them and so maybe it's just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and there's nothing more to be said about it no way of reasoning that's the evasion the evasion of skepticism to which I would offer the following reply it's true these questions have been debated for a very long time but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they're impossible in one sense they're unavoidable in another and the
reason they're unavoidable the reason they're inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions every day so skepticism just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection there's no solution Immanuel Kant described very well the problem with skepticism when he wrote skepticism is a resting place for human reason where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement simply to acquiesce in skepticism count wrote can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason I've tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments some sense of
the risks and temptations of the perils and the possibilities I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead thank you very much like in the situation that desperate you have to do what you have to do to survive oh we have to do what you have to do yeah I've got to do what you had to do pretty much if you've been going nineteen days without any food um you know someone just has to take the sacrifice someone has
to make sacrifices and people can survive all right that's good what's your name Marquis all right good what do you say to Marcus
