Lecture: Ethics III: Kant, Virtue, and the Trolley Problem
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 12
Opening
Your phone buzzes, and it's your friend's manager. Your friend skipped a shift to go to a job interview, and the manager wants to know whether your friend was really sick. One small lie would protect your friend. The truth might cost them the job. What should you say?
That question isn't only yours. A business major decides whether to cover for a coworker. A future coach decides how to build courage in a nervous beginner. A nursing student weighs a hard truth against the feelings of someone in their care. Each of them is asking what makes an act right.
In Week 11 you met one answer: utilitarianism, which looks at the happiness an act brings about for everyone affected. In this lecture I'll give you two more. Immanuel Kant looks at the duty behind an act and at respect for persons. Aristotle looks at character, at the kind of person your acts make you. Then we'll put all three theories on one famous case, a runaway trolley, and watch where they agree and where they part. Next week, in Week 13, the course turns to political philosophy and its last ethical theory, the social contract.
1. Duty and maxims
Picture a store clerk counting out change for a customer who's distracted by a phone call. The clerk could keep a few dollars, and no one would notice. The clerk hands back every coin. Why? Maybe a camera is watching. Maybe cheating could cost the job. Or maybe the clerk won't cheat because cheating is wrong.
The act is the same in every version. Kant thought the reason is what matters most. In 1785 he published the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It builds ethics on duty: what morality requires of you whatever you happen to want. And every act has a maxim: the personal rule a person acts on, stated with its reason.
Here's the idea that ties those together. For Kant, what gives an act moral worth is the reason behind it: doing the right thing because it is right, not only because it pays. The clerk who returns the change only because of the camera does the right act. The clerk who returns it because cheating is wrong does something more.
The theory is called Kantian deontology. It puts duty and respect for persons first. Its best defenders put it this way: a person isn't a thing to be traded for a better total. Each of us can reason and set our own goals, and that gives every person a worth no outcome can outweigh.
Pause and try this. What's your maxim if you lie to the manager to protect your friend?
Say it as a rule, with its reason attached.
Here's the answer. It's "When a lie would protect a friend, I will lie," because a maxim is the personal rule you act on, stated with its reason.
2. Two kinds of command
Think about the advice you hear in a week. "If you want to make the bus, leave by eight." "If you want strong arms, lift weights." Each piece of advice has an "if you want" attached. Stop caring about the bus, and the advice loses its grip on you.
That's a hypothetical imperative: a command that tells you what to do if you want some end, such as "If you want to pass, study." Drop the end, and the command lapses.
Now think about "Do not lie." No "if you want" is attached. It seems to hold whether you like it or not. That's a categorical imperative: a command that holds unconditionally, whatever you want. In Kant's ethics, the categorical imperative is the supreme principle of morality, and the course quotes 2 of its formulas.
One warning before we go on. Categorical doesn't mean "felt very strongly". You can care enormously about winning a race, and the advice to train is still hypothetical, because it depends on wanting to win.
Pause and try this. Is "If you want to pass, study" a hypothetical imperative or a categorical one?
Ask whether an "if you want" is attached.
Here's the answer. It's hypothetical, because it binds you only if you want to pass, and if you drop that goal the command lapses.
3. The formula of universal law
Picture a crowded concert exit. One person shoves past the line, and it works for them, because everyone else is waiting. Now imagine everyone shoving. The exit jams, and nobody gets out faster. The plan only worked because almost nobody else followed it.
Kant built that thought into a test. In Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's translation, his formula of universal law reads: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." The words "thou canst" are Abbott's, the translator's. Kant wrote in German.
The test has 3 steps. State your maxim. Imagine everyone acting on it. Ask whether you could still will it. Try it on statement 3 from the course's theory-matching set, which is illustrative: lying to get a loan is wrong because a universal rule of lying-to-borrow would defeat itself. If every borrower in need promised to repay a loan they knew they couldn't repay, lenders would stop believing promises. Then no one could get a loan by promising, and the maxim would defeat itself.
Here's the trap. This isn't the golden rule: the rule to treat others as you would want to be treated. The golden rule depends on what you happen to want. Kant's test asks whether your maxim could hold as a law for everyone, whatever anyone wants.
Pause and try this. A borrower says, "I wouldn't mind being lied to, so lying-to-borrow passes." What's gone wrong?
Think about which test the borrower is running.
Here's the answer. The borrower ran the golden rule, which asks about wants, but the universal-law test still fails, because the lying-to-borrow maxim defeats itself whatever anyone prefers.
4. The formula of humanity
Stand at a café counter. You want coffee, and the cashier is how you get it. In a sense, you're using the cashier. Is that wrong? Hardly anyone thinks so. You ask, you pay, and the cashier chose the job.
Now picture a group report at work. A coworker promises a new hire shared credit, lets the new hire do all the work, then presents the report alone. Something has gone wrong here that didn't go wrong at the café.
Kant's second formula names it. In Abbott's translation, the formula of humanity reads: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only." Treating a person as an end means respecting them as someone with their own goals and choices. Using someone merely as a means means using them only as a tool for your goals, in a way they could not agree to.
The café is fine, because the cashier is treated as an end too. The group report isn't, because the new hire was deceived into the deal. That's statement 4 in the theory-matching set: using a person merely as a tool is wrong even if it helps many.
Pause and try this. Does the formula of humanity forbid you from relying on a bus driver to get to work?
Look hard at the last word of the formula.
Here's the answer. No, because the formula says never as means only, and you treat the driver as an end too: the driver chose the job and you pay the fare.
5. Pressing Kant
Every position gets its strongest objection, so let's go back to the phone call. Your maxim was "When a lie would protect a friend, I will lie." Run the test. If everyone lied whenever it protected a friend, a manager could never trust an answer about a friend, and the lie would stop working. So the maxim fails.
But a lie that saves a friend's job can seem permitted, even kind. That's the rigidity objection: Kant's duties seem to allow no exceptions, even when keeping a duty would let serious harm come to someone.
Here's the reply from the Kantian side. The duty not to deceive protects the trust everyone depends on, and lying to the manager treats the manager merely as a means. And you still have an honest way out: "That's my friend's to explain, not mine." Philosophers still argue about harder cases, and the course keys no verdict.
Now an argument with the same theme, from the course's argument set, which is illustrative. Every person deserves respect. Every prisoner is a person. So every prisoner deserves respect. It's the categorical syllogism from Week 2: every A is B, every C is A, so every C is B.
Pause and try this. Is argument 9 valid, and does the course key it as sound?
Separate the form from the truth of the premises.
Here's the answer. It's valid, by categorical syllogism, but the course never keys it as sound, because its premises are open questions.
6. Flourishing
Think of someone you admire, not for one thing they did, but for how they live. Maybe a grandparent who stayed honest when it cost them. Maybe a teammate who stayed calm and fair under pressure. You admire the person, not only the acts.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, an ancient Greek work, starts there. It asks what a good human life is, and its answer is eudaimonia: Aristotle's word for the human good, usually translated as flourishing. It means a whole life lived well, achieved by living according to the virtues. A virtue is a settled trait of good character, such as courage or honesty.
The theory is virtue ethics. It puts character and flourishing first, and it asks what a person of good character would do and what helps a life flourish. Its best defenders say morality is about the whole of a life. You can't become kind by applying a formula once. You become kind by practice, and then kind acts come from who you are. That's why motive matters: two people can do the same act, one from kindness and one from vanity, and only the first shows good character.
Pause and try this. A classmate says eudaimonia means feeling happy right now. What's missing?
Think about the word "whole".
Here's the answer. Eudaimonia is a whole life lived well, not a passing mood, so a hard week can still belong to a flourishing life.
7. The mean and habituation
Picture a pool on the first day of swim lessons. One young swimmer won't go near the deep end. Another wants to leap off the high board before swimming a full length. Neither is being brave. One has too little nerve, and one has too much.
For Aristotle, each virtue is a mean between 2 vices, one of too little and one of too much. Courage lies between cowardice and rashness. The mean is the fitting response for this person in this situation, not an arithmetic halfway point. And virtues grow by habituation: developing a virtue by practice, doing brave or honest acts again and again until acting that way comes from who you are.
So how does a coach teach courage? Not by pushing a frightened beginner off the high board, which trains rashness. Not by letting the beginner skip every dive, which trains cowardice. The coach sets a low dive, then a higher one. For the beginner, the brave act is the low board. For an experienced swimmer, it might be a hard race.
Virtue ethics faces the action-guidance objection: in a hard case, "do what a person of good character would do" gives too little direction. Its reply is that the virtues give real guidance, be honest, be fair, be kind, and that hard cases call for trained judgment rather than a formula.
Pause and try this. Why isn't courage the exact midpoint between cowardice and rashness?
Picture the beginner and the experienced swimmer side by side.
Here's the answer. The mean depends on the person and the situation, so the brave act is the low board for one swimmer and a hard race for another.
8. The runaway trolley
Now the week's thought experiment. A tram's brakes have failed, and it's heading toward 5 people who can't get out of the way. The driver can steer onto a side track, where there's 1 person. Philippa Foot devised that case in 1967. Judith Jarvis Thomson named it the trolley problem in 1976, and she developed variations on it. Its question is: is it permissible to kill one to save five? It tests consequences against duties.
Let me give you 2 variations, and I'll label them as variations, with details of the course's own. In the bystander variation, you stand beside a switch and can turn the trolley onto the side track. In the footbridge variation, you stand on a bridge beside a stranger wearing a heavy backpack, and the only way to stop the trolley is to push the stranger onto the track.
Now the count. In every version, acting leaves 1 person dead and not acting leaves 5 dead. That's 4 fewer deaths, every time. The numbers never change. So if your answer changes between versions, something other than the count is doing the work.
Pause and try this. Who devised the runaway tram case, and who named it the trolley problem?
Keep the case and the name apart.
Here's the answer. Philippa Foot devised the case in 1967, and Judith Jarvis Thomson named it the trolley problem in 1976.
9. Three theories, one case
Let's put the three theories on the trolley together. Utilitarianism puts consequences first, so it looks at the count, and on the count all 3 versions are alike: 4 fewer deaths.
A Kantian reading puts duty and respect for persons first, and it can tell the versions apart. On the footbridge, the stranger's body is used as a tool to stop the trolley, merely as a means. At the switch, the person on the side track isn't used at all: the plan would work as well if no one were there.
Virtue ethics puts character first. It asks what a person of compassion, courage, and good judgment would do, and what pushing a stranger would make of the person who does it.
All 3 theories take the 5 deaths seriously. They part over whether the count settles the case. And the course keys no answer to the trolley problem. Your job is to explain each side so well that its own defenders would sign your summary.
Pause and try this. Which theory treats the switch and the footbridge alike, and why?
Think about which theory looks only at the count.
Here's the answer. Utilitarianism treats them alike, because it puts consequences first and the count is the same in both: 4 fewer deaths.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Kant builds ethics on duty, and every act has a maxim. A hypothetical imperative depends on what you want; a categorical imperative doesn't. The formula of universal law tests whether your maxim could hold for everyone, and it isn't the golden rule. The formula of humanity forbids using people merely as means, not accepting their help. The rigidity objection presses Kant, and his defenders reply with trust and honest refusal. Aristotle's virtue ethics aims at eudaimonia, a whole life lived well. Each virtue is a mean, found by practice, not a halfway point. Foot devised the runaway tram, and Thomson named the trolley problem. Three theories read one case, and they part over whether the count settles it.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment. In Week 13, Political Philosophy: The State, Justice, and Liberty, you'll ask what makes a government legitimate.
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