哈佛大学公开课《公正：该如何做是好》：第一课：英文字幕.doc

Funding for this program is provided by.Additional funding provided by.This is a course about justice and we begin with a story.Suppose youre the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurtling down the trackat miles an hour. And at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track.You try to stop but you cant, your brakes dont work.You feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers, they will all die.Lets 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 endof that track, there is one worker working on the track.Your steering wheel works,so you can turn the trolley car,if you want to,onto the side trackkilling the one but sparing the five.Heres our first question:whats the right thing to do?What would you do?Lets take a poll.How many would turnthe trolley caronto the side track?Raise your hands.How many wouldnt?How many would go straight ahead?Keep your hands up those of youwho would go straight ahead.A handful of people would,the vast majority would turn.Lets hear first,now we need to beginto investigate the reasonswhy you thinkits the right thing to do.Lets begin with those in the majoritywho would turn to goonto the side track.Why would you do it?What would be your reason?Whos willing to volunteer a reason?Go ahead. Stand up.Because it cant be rightto kill five peoplewhen you can onlykill one person instead.It wouldnt be rightto kill five if you could killone person instead.Thats a good reason.Thats a good reason.Who else?Does everybody agreewith that reason? Go ahead.Well I was thinking its the same reasonon / with regardto the people who flew the planeinto the Pennsylvania fieldas heroes because they choseto kill the people on the planeand not kill more peoplein big buildings.So the principle therewas the same on /.Its a tragic circumstancebut better to kill oneso that five can live,is that the reasonmost of you had,those of youwho would turn? Yes?Lets hear nowfrom those in the minority,those who wouldnt turn. Yes.Well, I think thatsthe same type of mentalitythat justifies genocideand totalitarianism.In order to saveone type of race,you wipe out the other.So what would you doin this case?You would, to avoidthe horrors of genocide,you would crashinto the five and kill them?Presumably, yes.You would?-Yeah.Okay. Who else?Thats a brave answer.Thank you.Lets consideranother trolley car caseand see whether those of youin the majoritywant to adhereto the principlebetter that one should dieso that five should live.This time youre not the driverof the trolley car,youre an onlooker.Youre standing on a bridgeoverlooking a trolley car track.And down the track comesa trolley car,at the end of the trackare five workers,the brakes dont work,the trolley caris about to careeninto the five and kill them.And now, youre not the driver,you really feel helplessuntil you noticestanding next to you,leaning over the bridgeis a very fat man.And you couldgive him a shove.He would fall over the bridgeonto the track right in the wayof the trolley car.He would diebut he would spare the five.Now, how many would pushthe fat man over the bridge?Raise your hand.How many wouldnt?Most people wouldnt.Heres the obvious question.What became of the principlebetter to save five liveseven if it means sacrificing one?What became of the principlethat almost everyone endorsedin the first case?I need to hear from someonewho was in the majorityin both cases.How do you explainthe difference between the two? Yes.The second one, I guess,involves an active choiceof pushing a person downwhich I guess that person himselfwould otherwise not have beeninvolved in the situation at all.And so to choose on his behalf,I guess, to involve himin something that heotherwise would have escaped is,I guess, more than whatyou have in the first casewhere the three parties,the driver and the two sets of workers,are already, I guess,in the situation.But the guy working,the one on the trackoff to the side,he didnt chooseto sacrifice his life any morethan the fat man did, did he?Thats true, but he wason the tracks and.This guy was on the bridge.Go ahead, you can come backif you want. All right.Its a hard question. You did well.You did very well.Its a hard question.Who else can find a wayof reconciling the reactionof the majorityin these two cases? Yes.Well, I guess in the first casewhere you have the one workerand the five,its a choice between those twoand you have to makea certain choice and peopleare going to diebecause of the trolley car,not necessarily becauseof your direct actions.The trolley car is a runaway thingand youre making a split second choice.Whereas pushing the fat man overis an actual actof murder on your part.You have control over thatwhereas you may not have controlover the trolley car.So I think its a slightlydifferent situation.All right, who has a reply?Thats good. Who has a way?Who wants to reply?Is that a way out of this?I dont think thatsa very good reasonbecause you choose to-either way you have to choosewho dies because you eitherchoose to turn and kill the person,which is an actof conscious thought to turn,or you choose to pushthe fat man overwhich is also an active,conscious action.So either way,youre making a choice.Do you want to reply?Im not really surethat thats the case.It just still seemskind of different.The act of actually pushingsomeone over onto the tracksand killing him,you are actually killing him yourself.Youre pushing himwith your own hands.Youre pushing himand thats differentthan steering somethingthat is going to causedeath into another.You know, it doesnt really sound rightsaying it now.No, no. Its good. Its good.Whats your name?Andrew.Andrew.Let me ask you this question, Andrew.Yes.Suppose standing on the bridgenext to the fat man,I didnt have to push him,suppose he was standing overa trap door that I could openby turning a steering wheel like that.Would you turn?For some reason,that still just seems more wrong.Right?I mean, maybe if you accidentallylike leaned into the steering wheelor something like that.But. Or say thatthe car is hurtlingtowards a switchthat will drop the trap.Then I could agree with that.Thats all right. Fair enough.It still seems wrong in a waythat it doesnt seem wrongin the first case to turn, you say.And in another way, I mean,in the first situationyoure involved directlywith the situation.In the second one,youre an onlooker as well.All right. -So you have the choiceof becoming involved or notby pushing the fat man.All right. Lets forget for the momentabout this case.Thats good.Lets imagine a different case.This time youre a doctorin an emergency roomand six patientscome to you.Theyve been in a terribletrolley car wreck.Five of themsustain moderate injuries,one is severely injured,you could spend all daycaring for the oneseverely injured victimbut in that time,the five would die.Or you could look after the five,restore them to healthbut during that time,the one severely injured personwould die.How many would save the five?Now as 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, youre a transplant surgeonand you have five patients,each in desperate needof an organ transplantin order to survive.One needs a heart,one 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 youthat in the next roomtheres a healthy guywho came in for a check-up.And hes you like that and hes 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 upif you would do it.Anyone in the balcony?I would.You would? Be careful,dont lean over too much.How many wouldnt?All right. What do you say?Speak up in the balcony,you who would yank outthe organs. Why?Id actually like to explore aslightly alternate possibilityof just taking the oneof the five who needs an organwho dies first and usingtheir four healthy organsto save the other four.Thats a pretty good idea.Thats a great ideaexcept for the factthat you just wreckedthe philosophical point.Lets step back from these storiesand these argumentsto notice a couple of thingsabout the way the argumentshave begun to unfold.Certain moral principleshave already begun to emergefrom the discussions weve had.And lets considerwhat those moral principles look like.The first moral principlethat emerged in the discussionsaid the right thing to do,the moral thing to dodepends on the consequencesthat will result from your action.At the end of the day,better that five should liveeven if one must die.Thats an exampleof consequentialist moral reasoning.Consequentialist moral reasoninglocates moralityin the consequences of an act,in the state of the worldthat will result from the thing you do.But then we went a little further,we considered those other casesand people werent so sureabout consequentialist moral reasoning.When people hesitatedto push the fat manover the bridgeor to yank out the organsof the innocent patient,people gestured toward reasonshaving to do withthe intrinsic qualityof 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 sakeof saving five lives.At least people thoughtthat in the second versionof each story we considered.So this pointsto a second categorical wayof thinking about moral reasoning.Categorical moral reasoninglocates moralityin certain absolutemoral requirements,certain categorical duties and rights,regardless of the consequences.Were going to explorein the days and weeks to comethe contrast betweenconsequentialist and categoricalmoral principles.The most influential exampleof consequential moral reasoningis utilitarianism,a doctrine inventedby Jeremy Bentham,the th centuryEnglish political philosopher.The most important philosopherof categorical moral reasoningis the th centuryGerman philosopher Immanuel Kant.So we will lookat those two different modesof moral reasoning,assess them,and also consider others.If you look at the syllabus,youll notice that we reada number of greatand famous books,books by Aristotle, John Locke,Immanuel Kant, John Stewart Mill,and others.Youll notice toofrom the syllabusthat we dont onlyread these books;we also take up contemporary,political, and legal controversiesthat raise philosophical questions.We will debate equality and inequality,affirmative action, free speech versushate speech, same sex marriage,military conscription,a range of practical questions. Why?Not just to enliventhese abstract and distant booksbut to make clear,to bring out whats at stakein our everyday lives,including our political lives,for philosophy.And so we will read these booksand we will debate these issues,and well see how each informsand illuminates the other.This may sound appealing enough,but here I have to issue a warning.And the warning is this,to read these booksin this way as an exercisein self knowledge,to read them in this waycarries certain risks,risks that are both personaland political,risks that every studentof political philosophy has known.These risks spring from the factthat philosophy teaches usand unsettles usby confronting us withwhat we already know.Theres an irony.The difficulty of this courseconsists in the factthat it teacheswhat you already know.It works by taking what we knowfrom familiar unquestioned settingsand making it strange.Thats how those examples worked,the hypotheticals with which we began,with their mix of playfulnessand sobriety.Its also how thesephilosophical books work.Philosophy estranges usfrom the familiar,not by supplying new informationbut by inviting and provokinga new way of seeing but,and heres the risk,once the familiar turns strange,its never quite the same again.Self knowledge is like lost innocence,however unsettling you find it;it can never be un-thoughtor un-known.What makes this enterprise difficultbut also rivetingis that moral and political philosophyis a story and you dont knowwhere the story will lead.But what you do knowis that the story is about you.Those are the personal risks.Now what of the political risks?One way of introducing a courselike this would be to promise youthat by reading these booksand debating these issues,you will become a better,more responsible citizen;you will examine the presuppositionsof public policy,you will hone your political judgment,you will become a moreeffective participant in public affairs.But this would be a partialand misleading promise.Political philosophy,for the most part,hasnt worked that way.You have to allow for the possibilitythat political philosophymay make you a worse citizenrather than a better oneor at least a worse citizenbefore it makes you a better one,and thats becausephilosophy is a distancing,even debilitating, activity.And you see this,going back to Socrates,theres a dialogue,the Gorgias, in whichone of Socrates friends, Callicles,tries to talk him out ofphilosophizing.Callicles tells SocratesPhilosophy is a pretty toyif one indulges in itwith moderationat the right time of life. But if onepursues it further than one should,it is absolute ruin.Take my advice, Callicles says,abandon argument.Learn the accomplishmentsof active life,take for your modelsnot those people who spendtheir time on these petty quibblesbut those who have a good livelihoodand reputation and manyother blessings.So Callicles is really saying to SocratesQuit philosophizing, get real,go to business school.And Callicles did have a point.He had a point because philosophydistances us from conventions,from established assumptions,and from settled beliefs.Those are the risks,personal and political.And in the faceof these risks,there is a characteristic evasion.The name of the evasionis skepticism, its the idea well, it goes something like this we didnt resolve once and for alleither the cases or the principleswe were arguing when we beganand if Aristotle and Lockeand Kant and Millhavent solved these questionsafter all of these years,who are we to think that we,here in Sanders Theatre,over the course of a semester,can resolve them?And so, maybe its just a matterof each person having his or her ownprinciples and theres nothing moreto be said about it,no way of reasoning.Thats the evasion,the evasion of skepticism,to which I would offerthe following reply.Its true, these questions have beendebated for a very long timebut the very factthat they have recurred and persistedmay suggest that thoughtheyre impossible in one sense,theyre unavoidable in another.And the reason theyre unavoidable,the reason theyre inescapableis that we live some answerto these questions every day.So skepticism, just throwing up your handsand giving up on moral reflectionis no solution.Immanuel Kant described very wellthe problem with skepticismwhen he wroteSkepticism is a resting placefor human reason,where it can reflect uponits dogmatic wanderings,but it is no dwelling placefor permanent settlement.Simply to acquiesce in skepticism,Kant wrote,can never suffice to overcomethe restlessness of reason.Ive tried to suggestthrough these storiesand these argumentssome sense of the risksand temptations,of the perils and the possibilities.I would simply conclude by sayingthat the aim of this courseis to awaken the restlessness of reasonand to see where it might lead.Thank you very much.Like, in a situation that desperate,you have to dowhat you have to do to survive.-You have to do what you have to do?You got to dowhat you got to do, pretty much.If youve been going dayswithout any food, you know,someone just hasto take the sacrifice.Someone has to make the sacrificeand people can survive.Alright, thats good.Whats your name?Marcus.-Marcus, what do you say to Marcus?Last time,we started out last timewith some stories,with some moral dilemmasabout trolley carsand about doctorsand healthy patientsvulnerable to being victimsof organ transplantation.We noticed two thingsabout the arguments we had,one had to do with the waywe were arguing.We began with our judgmentsin particular cases.We tried to articulate the reasonsor the principles lying behindour judgments.And then confrontedwith a new case,we found ourselvesreexamining those principles,revising eachin the light of the other.And we noticed thebuilt in pressureto try to bring into alignmentour judgmentsabout particular casesand the principleswe would endorseon reflection.We also noticed somethingabout the substanceof the argumentsthat emerged from the discussion.We noticed that sometimeswe were tempted to locatethe morality of an actin the consequences, in the results,in the state of the worldthat it brought about.And we called thisconsequentialist moral reasoning.But we also noticedthat in some cases,we werent swayedonly by the result.Sometimes, many of us felt,that not just consequencesbut also the intrinsic qualityor characterof the act matters morally.Some people arguedthat there are certain thingsthat are just categorically wrongeven if they bring abouta good result,even if they saved five peopleat the cost of one life.So we contrasted consequentialistmoral principles with categorical ones.Today and in the next few days,we will begin to examineone of the most influential versionsof consequentialist moral theory.And thats the philosophyof utilitarianism.Jeremy Bentham,the th centuryEnglish political philosophergave first the first clearsystematic expressionto the utilitarian moral theory.And Benthams idea,his essential idea,is a very simple one.With a lot of morallyintuitive appeal,Benthams ideais the following,the right thing to do;the