Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T02:36:22.833Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Virtue ethics and the trolley problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2023

Hallvard Lillehammer
Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Get access

Summary

Since the publication of Judith Thomson’s 1976 paper, solving the Trolley Problem has been a favorite preoccupation of utilitarians and deontologists. Why is it permissible to divert a runaway trolley, thereby killing one person to save five others, but impermissible to push a big man onto a track to save five others.To date, virtue ethicists have not shown any interest in the debate.An obvious reason for this lack of interest is that virtue ethicists reject the very idea that there are universal moral rules and principles, according to which actions can be evaluated as permissible or impermissible. It is possible to frame the Trolley Problem in terms of what a virtuous person would and wouldn’t do, but then a further problem emerges, namely, that trolley experiments are not good tests of character. They rule out many of the ways that virtuous people can distinguish themselves from the non-virtuous.I discuss some of these problems in the first part of the chapter. In the second part, and with a few reservations and qualifications in mind, I argue that a virtue ethicist can support our commonsense intuitions in two central cases – Bystander and Footbridge – while also offering a response to Thomson’s Loop challenge.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Trolley Problem , pp. 116 - 133
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×