Virtue ethics and the Trolley Problem
In Hallvard Lillehammer (ed.),
The Trolley Problem. Cambridge University Press (
2022)
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Abstract
Since the publication of Judith Thomson’s 1976 paper, solving the Trolley Problem has been a favourite preoccupation of utilitarians and deontologists: Is there a general moral principle that can explain or support our conflicting intuitions in the Bystander and Footbridge cases? 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? I briefly discuss the reasons why virtue ethicists tend to avoid the Trolley Debate and then, with a few reservations and qualifications in place, go on to argue that a virtue ethicist can support our common-sense intuitions in the Bystander and Footbridge cases while also offering a response to Thomson’s Loop Challenge.