This chapter defends a non-consequentialist approach to justifying harming innocent nonthreatening people. The discussion centers on variations of cases where either a trolley driver or a bystander may redirect a trolley so that it kills one person, rather than five people towards whom it is headed. The article begins by critically examining other non-consequentialist proposals for why turning the trolley may be justified in both types of cases. It then defends seven principles, which together comprise the “Doctrine of Productive Purity” (DPP). The DPP implies that interpersonal harms may be justified by what produces them as opposed to by the goods they produce as in consequentialist views. The article contrasts the DPP with threshold deontology and considers how those whom one might permissibly harm may still permissibly resist such harm. The chapter concludes by considering limits of the DPP, the moral significance of the DPP for relations between people, and a new trolley problem that has implications for the killing/letting die distinction.

Philippa Foot offered her original Trolley Case, where a driver will unavoidably kill either five or one, neither to present a moral quandary nor to pose any special problem for moral theory. Its purpose was simply to illustrate how her theory of duties – which she deployed to defend non-consequentialist intuitions about various other cases of harmful agency – could also handle cases like this one where consequentialist verdicts seem apt. The Trolley Problem arose when Judith Jarvis Thomson modified the case, using the bystander variation to raise difficulties for Foot. Intuitively, it seems that the bystander may equally turn the trolley, but that would amount to killing one to save five, which was ruled out by Foot’s theory (even though it allowed a driver to kill one to avoid killing five). That was the Trolley Problem, which amounted to a challenge to explain why the bystander trolley case is an exception to the usual prohibition against killing some to save others for the greater good. For decades Thomson saw it as a legitimate challenge and offered plausible ways of meeting it. Later, however, she changed her mind, concluding that it is not permissible for the bystander to turn the trolley after all. In this chapter, I begin by examining the relevant background, refining the understanding of the Trolley Problem, and considering basic methodological issues in this area of normative ethics. I then develop a solution to the Trolley Problem along with a diagnosis of what went wrong in Thomson’s later attempt to show that there was never really a Trolley Problem to begin with. In the end I hope to have shown why there was indeed an important theoretical challenge posed by the Trolley Problem and how it can be resolved in a principled way with minor revisions to Foot’s original theory.

The Trolley Problem is not only one of the most widely discussed puzzles in moral philosophy. It is also one of the most controversial with respect to its perceived importance. At the one end of the spectrum there are those who consider it to reveal facts that belong at the very center of our moral understanding. At the other end of the spectrum there are those who consider it to be an example of contemporary philosophy at its most pointless. In this chapter, I critically address this dispute by tracing the discussion of the problem from its earliest formulation on the work of Philippa Foot, Judith Thomson, and Frances Kamm. Then I discuss a number of the most important criticisms of these discussions, drawing on the work of Barbara Fried. In doing so, I describe not only the actual causes of the problem’s continuing interest but also the underlying justification and rationale for that interest to which that history gives evidence.

The goal of Chapter 5 is to respond to a long-standing objection to the PDE known as the closeness problem. The problem is supposed to arise because intentions are sufficiently fine-grained that an agent need not intend harm in nearly any situation. The PDE therefore fails to rule out conduct that is intuitively objectionable in a host of cases unless it is supplemented with a criterion of excessive closeness, whose role is to identify things that are “too close” to harm to be considered incidental for purposes of double effect. However, it also proves extremely difficult to specify a criterion of closeness that is not arbitrary or subject to counterexamples. The closeness problem is often thought to be particularly acute for Anscombe-style accounts of intentional action, such as the one I presented in Chapter 4. I argue, however, that the magnitude of the closeness problem has been exaggerated and that the PDE does not need to be supplemented by a criterion of closeness.

Chapter 3 develops a theoretical grounding for the PDE, the solidarity rationale. Taking a cue from Philippa Foot, I situate the PDE within a larger region of morality, one structured around the concept of solidarity. I propose that our conduct is measured by a standard of human solidarity toward each other person, that is, a standard of concern and goodwill that is based on our common humanity, and that a person’s conduct is wrong when it deviates from this standard. I argue that the solidarity standard grounds more specific moral norms, including the precept of beneficence, the strict constraint against intentional harm, and the Principles of Proportionality and Due Care. Finally, I argue that the normative foundation for the solidarity standard is the dignity of human beings.

I show how the account of strong evaluative meaning developed in Chapter 1 allows us to overcome problems in prominent views among neo-Aristotelians of the relationship of virtue to happiness (e.g., instrumentalist accounts) by enabling us to regard virtue as constitutive of happiness understood as a normatively higher, nobler, more meaningful mode of life, and which I show is in keeping with Aristotle’s own view of eudaimonia. I engage here especially with Philippa Foot, since she has endorsed each of the prominent views I consider throughout her career. In making the case for my constitutive view I also seek to avoid McDowell’s problematic claim that “no sacrifice necessitated by the life of excellence … can count as a genuine loss.” My account of a meaningful life aims to address the problem of loss in human life, which I argue requires us to address the problem of cosmodicy (i.e., the problem of affirming life in the world as worthwhile in the face of evil and suffering). This problem is taken up further in Chapters 4 and 5.

I seek to establish the claim that we are fundamentally and distinctively the meaning-seeking animal through an exploration of the engaged standpoint from within our human form of life, where it can be seen that our human form of life is shaped by “strong evaluative meaning,” that is, meaning or value that involves qualitative distinction (e.g., between higher and lower, noble and base, sacred and profane, etc.) and places normative demands upon us. I also show how this dimension of meaning is overlooked by the dominant neo-Aristotelian approach because of its emphasis on a disengaged standpoint on our human form of life rather than an engaged standpoint and, thus, it does not provide us with an adequate philosophical anthropology and along with this it does not provide us with an adequate account of our reasons for the life of virtue. Moreover, I seek to counter a disenchanting move made by such neo-Aristotelians that involves denying any special realm of obligation. There is such a realm, I argue, and it is the whole realm of strong evaluative meaning, which includes more than just the domain of “the moral” narrowly construed as concerned with what we owe to others.