Philosophers are fond of fiction and of imaginary examples to fill out their discussions of ethics. As with the stories of Jim and the guerrillas, of down and outs unwisely wandering into transplant hospitals and of railway wagons careering out of control towards philosophically minded points switchers, these examples are inclined to become baroque in their complexity and over-elaboration; any initial force or verisimilitude they may have had in their unadorned state is quickly overlain with a heavy varnish of cleverness and complication.

As an antidote to this modern day scholasticism, we could propose the true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, recently made into a film in which the two protagonists actually describe (independently) what happened.