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Fairness, Utility and Survival

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Richard L. Trammell  and
Thomas E. Wren
Richard L. Trammell
Affiliation:
Grove City College
Thomas E. Wren
Affiliation:
Loyola University of Chicago
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Abstract

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Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 52 , Issue 201 , July 1977 , pp. 331 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1977

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References

1 Philosophy 50, No. 191 (07 1975). 81–87.Google Scholar

2 Or as Robert Nozick puts it in a related context, we need to consider such questions in spite of their sounding ‘slightly hysterical’. Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 206.Google Scholar

3 But see Trammell's, Richard L. article, ‘Saving Life and Taking Life’, Journal of Philosophy 72, No. 5 (13 03 1975), 131–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Like most others who cite it, Harris ignores the bitterly ironic context in which Clough's famous line appears:

Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive

Officiously to keep alive.

Do not adultery commit;

Advantage rarely comes of it;

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,

When it's so lucrative to cheat:…

The Latest Decalogue

5 Cf. Barry, Brian, Political Argument (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), Ch. 6Google Scholar, and Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 85–86.Google Scholar

6 Does Harris realize what Y and Z are really up to here? Apparently not, for he writes, ‘The problem of narrowing down the class of possible donors without discriminating unfairly against some sub-class of society is, I suspect, insoluble’ (p. 86).