Lesser-Evil Justifications for Harming: Why We’re Required to Turn the Trolley

Philosophical Quarterly 68 (272):460-480 (2018)
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Abstract

Much philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it will kill one. But little attention has been paid to whether the reasons that ground a permission to divert thereby ground a duty to divert. This paper defends the Requirement Thesis, which holds that one is, ordinarily, required to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming for the sake of others. Cases in which we have lesser-evil justifications of harming for the sake of others are rescue cases. Ordinarily, an agent is under a duty to rescue unless doing so imposes too great a cost on her, or violates someone else's rights. When neither of these defeating conditions obtain, one is required to rescue even if this involves causing harm to innocent people.

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Helen Frowe
Stockholm University

Citations of this work

Duty and Doubt.Seth Lazar - 2020 - Journal of Practical Ethics 8 (1):28-55.
How (and How Not) to Defend Lesser-Evil Options.Kerah Gordon-Solmon - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 20 (3-4):211-232.
Self-Defense.Helen Frowe & Jonathan Parry - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2021.
Moral Sunk Costs.Seth Lazar - 2018 - The Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273):841–861.
Applying the Imminence Requirement to Police.Ben Jones - 2023 - Criminal Justice Ethics 42 (1):52-63.

View all 19 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The limits of morality.Shelly Kagan - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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