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The Choice Between Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Don Locke
Don Locke
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Are there circumstances in which we would be justified in taking one person's life for the sake of others? I am not here concerned with cases of self-defence, or what we might call ‘other-defence’, where one person has to be killed to prevent him taking the lives of others. Nor am I concerned with cases of self-sacrifice, or suicide more generally, or euthanasia; nor with capital punishment, or killing in warfare; nor even, for reasons we shall explore, with abortion. I am concerned with those cases where several people have an equal claim or right to life, the same claim or right which we typically accord to all human beings, but where not all can survive. In short we are faced with a choice, as to who shall live and who shall die.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 57 , Issue 222 , October 1982 , pp. 453 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1982

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References

1 Cf. P. Foot, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Oxford Review 5 (1967), 5–15.

2 P. Foot, op. cit. 8.

3 J. Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), 206–10.

4 e.g. G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘Who is Wronged?’, Oxford Review 5 (1967), 16–17; J. M. Taurek, ‘Should the Numbers Count?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (1977), 293–316.

5 J. Harris, ‘The Survival Lottery’, Philosophy 50 (1975), 81–7.

6 e.g. P. Singer, ‘Utility and the Survival Lottery’, Philosophy 52 (1977), 218–22; R. Trammell and T. Wren, ‘Fairness, Utility and Survival’, Philosophy 52(1977), 305–313.

7 ‘Whatever the Consequences’, Analysis 26 (1965), 83–102.

8 Cf. B. Brody, ‘Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life’, American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1973), 133–140.

9 Op. cit.

10 P. Foot, op cit. 7.

11 Cf. R. Young, ‘Voluntary and Non-voluntary Euthanasia’, Monist 59 (1976)

12 Op. cit. I I.

13 ‘saving Life and Taking Life’, Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 131–137.

14 ‘Doing, Refraining, and the Strenuousness of Morality’, American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), 29–39. See also B. Russell, ‘On the Relative Strictness of Negative and Positive Duties’, American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), 87–97; R. Brook, ‘Dischargability, Optionality, and the Duty to Save Lives’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979), 194–200; J. Rachels, ‘Killing and Starving to Death’, Philosophy 54 (1979), 159–171.

15 15 ‘Tooley's Moral Symmetry Principle’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 5 (1976) 305–313.

16 J. Glover, op. cit. no.

17 E.g. J. Rachels, op. cit.

18 Cf. D. Dinello, ‘On Killing and Letting Die’, Analysis 31 (1970), 83–86.

19 P. Foot, op. cit. I I.

20 J. J. Thomson, ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’, Monist 59 (1976), 204–17. Cf. M. Tooley, ‘Abortion and Infanticide’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972), 37–65; J. Rachels, ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia’, New England Journal of Medicine 292 (1975), 78–80.

21 Op. cit.

22 R. Trammell, ‘saving Life and Taking Life’; J. Rachels, ‘Killing and Starving to Death’.

23 J. Glover, op. cit. 95.

24 Cf. R. Boyle, ‘On Killing and Letting Die’, New Scholasticism 51 (1977), 433–452

25 Op. cit.

26 Op. cit.

27 Cf. J. Rachels, ‘Killing and Starving to Death’.

28 Cf. J. Glover, op. cit. Chap.7.

29 Cf. P. Foot, op. cit. 10–11.

30 Op. cit. 97.

31 Cf. R. Trammell, ‘saving Life and Taking Life’.

32 J. Harris, ‘ T h e Marxist Conception of Violence’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 3 (1974), 192–220, sec. 2.

33 ‘It Makes No Difference Whether or Not I Do It’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Suppl. Vol. 49 (1975), 171–190.

34 ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, in J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973).

35 ‘Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism’, in H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy, 4th Series (London: Allen and Unwin, 1976), 120 n.

36 Cf. P. Winch, ‘The Universalisability of Moral Judgments’, Monist 49 (1965), 196–214.

37 ‘Absolute Ethics, Mathematics and the Impossibility of Polities’, in G. Vesey (ed.), Human Values, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 1976–1977 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978).

38 Op. cit.

39 P. Foot, op. cit. 13. Cf. R. O'eil, ‘Killing, Letting Die and Justice’, Analysis 38 (1978), 124–125.

40 Op. cit.

41 Op. cit. 13.

42 J. J. Thomson, ‘A Defence of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971), 47–66.

43 Cf. J. Finnis, ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973), 117–145; J. J. Thomson, ‘Rights and Deaths’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973), 146–159.

44 S. Nicholson, ‘The Roman Catholic Doctrine of Therapeutic Abortion’, in M. Vetterling-Braggin, F. Elliston and J. English (eds.), Feminism and Philosophy (Towata, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1977).

45 ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’.

46 Cf. P. T. Geach, ‘The Moral Law and the Law of God’, in God and the Soul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969).