Michael Sandel - Justice ① The Moral Side of Murder & The Case for Cannibalism「殺人に正義はあるのだろうか」
いや、
これだけ最高な英語教材ってあるだろうか、というくらい !
現代アメリカを代表する哲学者、ハーバード大学の法哲学の教授、マイケル・サンデル (Michael Sandel) の講演集を連続でお届けします。
こんな簡単な英語で、わかりやすく、笑いを交えながら、正義 (justice) という民主主義政治の根幹の思想を説いていく、サンデルの見事な話術に魅了されてみよう。
日本語訳を見るより、そのまま英語で理解した方が簡単だよ～ !
最初の質問はこれ。
君は路面電車の運転手で、時速１００キロの猛スピードで走っている。君は行く手に５人の労働者がいることに気付いて電車を止めようとするが、ブレーキは効かない。
その時、脇にそれる線路待避線があることに気付く。しかし、そこにも働いている人が１人いる。ブレーキは効かないがハンドルは効くので、ハンドルをきって、脇の線路に入れば、１人は殺してしまうけれども、５人は助けることができる。
さあ、みんなだったらどうする?
あるいは、
今度は君は移植医で、生きるためには臓器移植がどうしても必要な５人の患者を抱えている。５人はそれぞれ心臓、肺、腎臓、肝臓、を必要としている。最後の１人は膵臓だ。そして、臓器のドナーはいない。君は５人の死を目前にしている。その時、君は隣の部屋に健康診断を受けにきた１人の健康な男がいるのを思い出す。（会場笑い）彼は昼寝をしている。（会場笑い）そっと部屋に忍びこんで、５つの臓器を抜き取れば、その人は死ぬが５人を助けられる。
さあ、みんなはどうする?
Lecture 1: The Moral Side of Murder
殺人に正義はあるのか
25分講義
ビデオスクリプト
Lecture 01
The Moral Side of Murder
Michael Sandel: This is a course about justice, and we begin with a story. Suppose you are the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour, and at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track. You try to stop but you can't. Your brakes don't work. You feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers, they will all die. Let's assume you know that for sure. And so you feel helpless until you notice that there is, off to the right, a sidetrack. And at the end of 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 track, killing the one, but sparing the five. Here's our first question: What's the right thing to do? What would you do?
Let's take a poll. How many would turn the trolley car onto the sidetrack? Raise your hands. How many wouldn't? How many would go straight ahead? Keep your hands up, those of you who would go straight ahead. A handful of people would. The vast majority would turn. Let's hear first, now we need to begin to investigate the reasons why you think it's the right thing to do. Let's begin with those in the majority, who would turn to go onto the sidetrack. Why would you do it? What would be your reason? Who is willing to volunteer a reason? Go ahead, stand up.
Student A: Umm, because it can't be right to kill five people when you can only kill one person instead.
Michael Sandel: It wouldn't be right to kill five if you could kill one person instead. That's a good reason. That's a good reason. Who else? Does everybody agree with that reason? Go ahead.
Student B: Umm, well I was thinking it was the same reason on 9/11, we regard the people who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field as heroes because they chose to kill the people on the plane, and not kill more people in big buildings.
Michael Sandel: So the principle there was the same on 9/11. It's a tragic circumstance, but better to kill one and so that five can live. Is that the reason most of you had, those of you that would turn? Yes? Let's hear now from those in the minority. Those who wouldn't turn. Yes.
Student C: Well I think that is the same type of mentality that justifies genocide and totalitarianism, in order to save one type of race you wipe out the other.
Michael Sandel: So what would you do in this case? You would, to avoid the horrors of genocide; you would crash into the five and kill them?
Student C: Presumably, yes.
Michael Sandel: You would?
Student C: Yea.
Michael Sandel: OK. Who else? That's a brave answer. Thank you. Let's consider another trolley car case, and see whether those of you in the majority want to adhere to the principle. Better that one should die so that five should live. This time you're not the driver of the trolley car, you're an onlooker. You're standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track, and down the track comes a trolley car, at the end of the track are five workers. The brakes don't work, the trolley car is about to careen into the five and kill them, and now, you're not the driver, you really feel helpless, until you notice, standing next to you, leaning over the bridge is a very fat man. And you could give him a shove, he would fall over the bridge, onto the track, right in the way of the trolley car, he would die, but he would spare the five.
Now, how many would push the fat man over the bridge? Raise your hand. How many wouldn't? Most people wouldn't. Here's the obvious question, what became of the principle? Better to save five lives, even if it means sacrificing one, what became of the principle that almost everyone endorsed, in the first case. I need to hear from somebody who was in the majority in both cases. How do you explain the difference between the two? Yes?
Student D: The second one, I guess, involves an active choice of pushing a person down, which, I guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in this situation at all, and so to choose on his behalf, I guess, to ah, to involve him in something he otherwise would have escaped is, I guess, more than what you have in the first case where the three parties, the driver and the two sets of workers are already, I guess, in the situation.
Michael Sandel: But the guy working, the one on the track off to the side, he didn't choose to sacrifice his life anymore than the fat man did, did he?
Student D: That's true, but he was on the tracks and you…
Michael Sandel: This guy was on the bridge. Go ahead. You can come back if you want. Alright, it's a hard question. Alright, you did well. You did very well. It's a hard question. Umm, who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction of the majority in these two cases? Yes?
Student E: Well I guess, umm, in the first case, where you have the one worker and the five. It's a choice between those two, and you have to make a certain choice and people are going to die because of the trolley car, not necessarily because of your direct actions. The trolley car is a runaway thing and you're making a split-second choice, whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act of murder on your part. You have control over that whereas you may not have control over the trolley car, so I think it's a slightly different situation.
Michael Sandel: Alright, who has a reply? Is that, no, that's good. Who has a way? Who wants to reply? Is that a way out of this?
Student F: Umm, I don't think that's a very good reason because you choose to, it's, either way you have to choose who dies because you either choose to turn and kill the person which is an active conscious thought to turn, or you choose to push the fat man over, which is an active conscious action. So, either way you're making a choice.
Michael Sandel: Do you want to reply?
Student E: Well I'm, I'm not really sure that's the case. It just still seems kind of different, the act of actually pushing someone over onto the tracks and killing him. You are actually killing him yourself.
Michael Sandel: You're pushing him with your own hands.
Student E: You're pushing him and that's different than steering something that is going to cause death into another, you know, it doesn't really sound right saying it now…
Michael Sandel: No, no, it's good.
Student E: when I'm up here.
Michael Sandel: It's good. What's your name?
Student E: Andrew.
Michael Sandel: Andrew. Let me ask you this question Andrew…
Andrew: Yes.
Michael Sandel: Suppose, standing on the bridge next to the fat man, I didn't have to push him, suppose he was standing over a trap door that I could open by turning a steering wheel like that? Would you turn?
Andrew: For, for some reason, that still just seems more wrong. Right? I mean, maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel or something like that, but ah, or say that the car is, is hurtling towards a switch that will drop the trap, umm, then I could agree with that.
Michael Sandel: Fair enough. It still seems wrong in a way that is doesn't seem wrong in the first case to turn you say.
Andrew: And then in another way, I mean, in the first situation, you're involved directly with the situation. In the second one you're an onlooker as well. So you have the choice of becoming involved or not by pushing the fat man.
Michael Sandel: Alright. Let's、let's, let's forget for the moment about this case. That's good. Ah, let's imagine a different case. This time you're a doctor in an emergency room and six patients come to you. Ah, they've been in a terrible trolley car wreck. Five of them sustained moderate injuries, one is severely injured, you could spend all day caring for the one severely injured victim, but in that time the five would die, or you look after the five, restore them to health, but during that time the one severely injured person would 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 you're a transplant surgeon and you have five patients, each in desperate need of an organ transplant in 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 you that in the next room there is a healthy guy who came in for a checkup, and he's… You like that? And he's, he's 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 up if you would do it. Anyone in the balcony?
Student: I would.
Michael Sandel: You would? Be careful, don't lean over too… What, ah, how many wouldn't? Alright. What do you say, speak up in the balcony. You who would yank out the organs, why?
Student G: I'd actually like to explore a slightly alternate possibility of just taking the one of the five who needs an organ who dies first, using their four healthy organs to save the other four.
Michael Sandel: That's a pretty good idea. That's a great idea, except for the fact that you just wrecked the philosophical point. Well let's, let's step back from these stories and these arguments to notice a couple of things about the way the arguments have begun to unfold.
Certain moral principles have already begun to emerge from the discussions we've had, and let's consider what those moral principles look like. The first moral principle that emerged in the discussion said, the right thing to do, the moral thing to do depends on the consequences that will result from your action. At the end of the day, better that five should live, even if one must die. That's an example of consequentialist moral reasoning. Consequentialist moral reasoning locates morality in the consequences of an act, in the state of the world that will result from the thing you do. But then we went a little further, we considered those other cases, and people weren't so sure about consequentialist moral reasoning. When people hesitated to push the fat man over the bridge, or to yank out the organs of the innocent patient, people gestured toward reasons having to do with the intrinsic quality of 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 sake of saving five lives. At least people thought that in the second version of each story we considered. So, this points to a second categorical way of thinking about moral reasoning. Categorical moral reasoning locates morality in certain absolute moral requirements, certain categorical duties and rights, regardless of the consequences.
We're going to explore in the days and weeks to come, the contrast between consequentialist and categorical moral principles. The most influential example of consequential moral reasoning (帰結主義的道徳観) is utilitarianism (功利主義), a doctrine invented by Jeremy Bentham, the 18th century English political philosopher.
The most important philosopher of categorical moral reasoning is the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
So we will look at those two different modes of moral reasoning, assess them, and also consider others. If you look at the syllabus you'll notice that we read a number of great and famous books. Books by Aristotle, John Locke.Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and others. You'll notice too, from the syllabus that we don't only read these books, we also take up contemporary, political and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions. We will debate equality and inequality, affirmative action, free speech versus hate speech, same sex marriage, military conscription a range of practical questions. Why? Not just to enliven these abstract and distant books, but to make clear, to bring out what's at stake in our everyday lives, including our political lives for philosophy. And so we will read these books and we will debate these issues and we'll see how each informs and illuminates the other.
This may sound appealing enough, but here, I have to issue a warning. And the warning is this, to read these books in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, to read them in this way carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of political philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know. There's an irony. The difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange. That's how those examples work, worked. They hypotheticals with which we began with their nicks of playfulness and sobriety. It's also how these philosophical books work. Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. But, and here's the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it's never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence, however unsettling, you find it. It can never be unthought or unknown. What makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting, is that moral and political philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story will lead, but what you do know is that the story is about you. Those are the personal risks. Now what of the political risks? One way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you, that by reading these books and debating these issues you will become a better, more responsible citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public policy, you will hone you political judgment, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs, but this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political philosophy, for the most part, hasn't worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one, or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one. And that's because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating activity. And you see this going back to Socrates, there's a dialog, "the Gorgias," in which one of Socrates' friends, Callicles, tries to talk him out of philosophizing. Callicles tells Socrates, philosophy is a pretty toy, if one indulges in it moderation at the right time of life, but if one pursues it further than one should it is absolute ruin. Take my advice, Callicles says, abandon argument. Learn the accomplishments of active life. Take for you models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles, but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings. So Callicles is really saying to Socrates, quit philosophizing, get real, go to business school. And Callicles did have a point. He had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions and from settled beliefs. Those are the risks, personal and political. And in the face of these risks there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is skepticism. It's the idea, well it goes something like this, we didn't resolve, once and for all, either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began. And if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and Mill haven't solved these questions after all of these years, who are we to think that we, here in Sanders Theater over the course of a semester can resolve them. And so maybe it's just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and there's nothing more to be said about it, no way of reasoning. That's the evasion, the evasion of skepticism, to which I would offer the following reply: It's true, these questions have been debated for a very long time, but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that, though they're impossible in one sense, they're unavoidable in another. And the reason they're unavoidable, the reason they're inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions ever day. So skepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution. Emanuel Kant described very well the problem with skepticism when he wrote, "Skepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement. Simply to acquiesce in skepticism, Kant wrote, "Can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason." I've tried to suggest, through these stories and these arguments, some sense of the risks and temptations, of the perils and the possibilities, I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, and to see where it might lead. Thank you very much.
Lecture2: The Case for Cannibalism
カニバリズム、そのときどうする !?
30分講義
Lecture 02
The Case for Cannibalism
Michael Sandel: Last time, we started out last time with some stories, with some moral dilemmas about trolley cars, and about doctors and healthy patients vulnerable to being victims of organ transplantation. We noticed two things about the arguments we had. One had to do with the way we were arguing. We began with our judgments in particular cases. We tried to articulate the reasons or the principles lying behind our judgments. And then, confronted with a new case, we found ourselves reexamining those principles, revising each in the light of the other. And we noticed the built in pressure to try to bring into alignment our judgments about particular cases and the principles we would endorse on reflection. We also noticed something about the substance of the arguments that emerged from the discussion. We noticed that sometimes we were tempted to locate the morality of an act in the consequences, in the results, in the state of the world that it brought about. And we called this consequentialist moral reasoning. But we also noticed that in some cases, we weren't swayed only by the result. Sometimes, many of us felt, that not just consequences, but also the intrinsic quality or character of the act matters morally. Some people argued that there are certain things that are just categorically wrong, even if they bring about a good result, even if they save five people at the cost of one life. So we contrasted consequentialist moral principles with categorical ones.
Today, and in the next few days, we will begin to examine one of the most influential versions of consequentialist moral theory, and that's the philosophy of utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, the 18th century English political philosopher, gave first, the first clear systematic expression to the utilitarian moral theory. And Bentham's idea, his essential idea is a very simple one. With a lot of morally intuitive appeal, Bentham's idea is the following. The right thing to do, the just thing to do is to maximize utility.
What did he mean by utility? He meant by utility the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering. Here's how he arrived at the principle of maximizing utility. He started out by observing that all of us, all human beings, are governed by two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. We human beings like pleasure and dislike pain. And so we should base morality, whether we are thinking what to do in our own lives, or whether as legislators or citizens, or thinking about what the law should be, the right thing to do, individually or collectively, is to maximize, act in a way that maximizes the overall level of happiness. Bentham's utilitarianism is sometimes summed up with the slogan, "the greatest good for the greatest number."
With this basic principle of utility on hand, let's begin to test it and to examine it by turning to another case, another story. But this time, not a hypothetical story, a real life story, the case of the Queen versus Dudley and Stephens. This was a 19th century British law case that's famous and much debated in law schools. Here's what happened in the case. I'll summarize the story, then I want to hear how you would rule, imagining that you are the jury. A newspaper account of the time described the background. A sadder story of disaster at sea was never told than that of the survivors of the yacht Mignonette.
The ship foundered in the South Atlantic, 1300 miles from the cape. There were four in the crew, Dudley was the captain, Stephens was the first mate, Brooks was a sailor, all men of excellent character, or so the newspaper account tells us. The fourth crew member was the cabin boy, Richard Parker, seventeen years old. He was an orphan. He had no family, and he was on his first long voyage at sea. He went, the news account tells us, rather against the advice of his friends; he went in the hopefulness of youthful ambition thinking the journey would make a man of him. Sadly it was not to be. The facts of the case were not in dispute. A wave hit the ship and the Mignonette went down. The four crew members escaped to a life boat. The only food they had were two cans of preserved turnips, no fresh water. For the first three days they ate nothing. On the fourth day they opened one of the cans of turnips and ate it. The next day they caught a turtle. Together with the other can of turnips, the turtle enabled them to subsist for the next few days, and then for eight days, they had nothing. No food, no water. Imagine yourself in a situation like that. What would you do? Here's what they did. By now, the cabin boy Parker is lying at the bottom of the lifeboat in the corner because he had drunk sea water against the advice of the others and he had become ill, and he appeared to be dying.
So on the nineteenth day, Dudley the captain, suggested that they should all have a lottery. That they should draw lots to see who would die to save the rest. Brooks refused. He didn't like the lottery idea. We don't know whether this was because he didn't want to take the chance or because he believed in categorical moral principles. But in any case, no lots were drawn. The next day, there was still no ship in sight, so Dudley told Brooks to avert his gaze and he motioned to Stephens that the boy Parker had better be killed. Dudley offered a prayer, he told the boy his time had come, and he killed him with a pen knife, stabbing him in the jugular vein. Brooks emerged from his conscientious objection to share in the gruesome bounty. For four days, the three of them fed on the body and blood of the cabin boy. True story. And then they were rescued. Dudley describes their rescue in his diary with staggering euphemism, quote, "On the 24th day, as we were having our breakfast, a ship appeared at last. The three survivors were picked up by German ship, they were taken back to Falmouth in England where they were arrested and tried. Brooks turned states witness. Dudley and Stephens went to trial. They didn't dispute the facts. They claimed they had acted out of necessity. That was their defense. They argued, in effect, better that one should die so that three could survive. The prosecutor wasn't swayed by that argument. He said murder is murder, and so the case went to trial. Now imagine you are the jury. And just to simplify the discussion, put aside the question of law. And let's assume that you as the jury are charged with deciding whether what they did was morally permissible or not. How many would vote not guilty, that what they did was morally permissible? And how many would vote guilty, what they did was morally wrong? A pretty sizable majority now let's see what people's reasons are and let me begin with those who are in the minority. Let's hear first from the defense of Dudley and Stephens. Why would you morally exonerate them? What are your reasons? Yes.
Student 1: I think it's, I think it is morally reprehensible, but I think that there's a distinction between what's morally reprehensible and what makes someone legally accountable. In other words, you know, as the judge said, what's, what's always moral isn't necessarily against the law, and while I don't think that necessity justifies theft or murder or any illegal act that some point your degree of necessity does in fact exonerate you from any guilt.
Michael Sandel: OK, good. Other defenders, other voices for the defense. Moral justification for what they did. Yes.
Marcus: Alright, thank you. Umm, I just feel like, in a situation that desperate you have to do you have to do to survive. Umm...
Michael Sandel: You have to do what you have to do.
Marcus: You have to, you gotta do what you gotta do, pretty much. If you've been going nineteen days without any food, umm, you know, someone just has to take to sacrifice, someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive. And furthermore, from that, let's say that they survive and then they become productive members of society who go home and start, like, a million charity organizations and this and that and this and that. I mean they benefit everybody in end, I mean, I don't know what they did afterwards. They might've gone and like, I don't know, kill more people, I don't know whatever, but...
Michael Sandel: What? What if they went home and turned out to be assassins?
Marcus: They went going home and turned out to be assassins? Well, ah...
Michael Sandel: You'd want to know who they assassinated.
Marcus: That's fair. That's fair. I'd want to know who they assassinated
Michael Sandel: OK. Alright, that's good. What's your name?
Marcus: Marcus.
Michael Sandel: Marcus. All right. We've heard a defense, couple of voices for the defense. Now we need to hear from the prosecution. Most people think what they did was wrong. Why? Yes.
Gret: One of the first things that I was thinking was, oh, if they haven't been eating for a really long time maybe, umm, they, that their mentally like affected, and so then that would, that could be used as a defense, a possible argument that oh, they weren't in the proper state of mind. They weren't making decisions they might not otherwise be making. And if that's an appealing argument, that, that you have to be in an altered mindset to do something like that, it suggests that people who find that argument convincing do think that they were acting...
Michael Sandel: But I want to know what you think. You are defend them. You vote to convict, right?
Gret: Yeah. I, I don't think that they acted in a morally appropriate way.
Michael Sandel: And why not? What do you say, here's Marcus, he just defended them. He said, you heard what he said. He said that you've got to do what you've got to do in a case like that.
Gret: Yeah.
Michael Sandel: What you say to Marcus?
Gret: But in, but there's no situation that would allow human beings to take the idea of fate or that the other people's lives in their own hands, and we don't have that kind of power.
Michael Sandel: Good. OK. Thank you. And what's you name?
Gret: Gret.
Michael Sandel: Gret.
Gret: Yes.
Michael Sandel: OK. Who else? What you say? Stand up.
Kathleen: I'm wondering if Dudley and Stephen had asked Richard, for Richard Parker's consents in, you know, dying, umm, if that would, would that exonerate them from, from, ah, an act of murder, and if so is that still morally justifiable?
Michael Sandel: That's interesting. All right. Consent, wait, wait, hang on. What's your name?
Kathleen: Kathleen.
Michael Sandel: Kathleen says, suppose they had, what would that scenario look like? So, in this story, Dudley is there, penknife in hand, but instead of the prayer, or before the prayer, he says Parker would you mind? We're desperately hungry, as Marcus empathizes with. We're desperately hungry. You're not going to last long anyhow.
Kathleen: He can be a martyr.
Michael Sandel: Would you be a martyr? How about it Parker? Then, then would, what do you think? Would it be morally justified then? Suppose, suppose Parker, in his semi stupor, says OK.
Kathleen: Umm, I don't think it would be morally justifiable, but I'm wondering...
Michael Sandel: Even then, even then wouldn't be?
Kathleen: No.
Michael Sandel: You don't think that, even with consent, it would be morally justified. Are the people who think, who want to take up Kathleen's consent idea and who think that that would make it more morally justified. Raise your hand if it would, if you think it would. That's very interesting. Why would consent make a moral difference? Why would it, yes.
Student 2: Well I just think that if he was making his own original idea, and it was his idea to start with, then that would be the only situation in which I would see it being appropriate in anyway, because that way you couldn't make the argument that he was pressured, you know, its three to one, or whatever the ratio was.
Michael Sandel: Right.
Student 2: And, umm, I think that if he was making a decision to give his life, and he took on the agency, umm, to sacrifice himself, which some people might see as admirable and other people. Umm, might disagree with that decision.
Michael Sandel: So if he came up with the idea, that's the only kind of consent we could have confidence in, morally, then it would be OK. Otherwise it would be kind of coerced consent under the circumstances, you think. Umm, is there anyone who thinks that even the consent of Parker would not justify their killing him. Who thinks that? Yes, tell us why, standup.
Student 3: I think that, ah, Parker would be killed with the hope that the other crew members would be rescued, so there's no definite reason that he should be killed because you don't know who, when they're going to get rescued, so if you kill him it's killing him in vain. Do you keep killing a crew member until you're rescued and then you're left with no one, 'cause someone's gonna die eventually.
Michael Sandel: Well the moral logic of the the situation seems to be that. That they would keep on picking off the weakest, maybe one by one until they were rescued. And in this case, luckily they were rescued when three at least were still alive. Now if, if Parker did give his consent, would it be alright, do you think, or not?
Student 3: No.
Michael Sandel: No?
Student 3: It still wouldn't be right.
Michael Sandel: and tell us why it wouldn't be alright.
Student 3: First of all cannibalism, I believe, is morally incorrect. So you shouldn't be eating a human anyway.
Michael Sandel: So you, so cannibalism is morally objectionable, as such. So then, even on the scenario of waiting until someone died, still it would be objectionable.
Student 3: Yes, to me personally. I feel like, umm, it all depends on one's personal morals, and like, we can't sit here and just, like this is, just my opinion, of course other people are going to disagree, but…
Michael Sandel: Well let's see, let's see what their disagreements are, and then we'll see if they have reasons that can persuade you or not. Let's try that. Alright, let's umm, now is there someone who can explain, those of you who were tempted by consent, can you explain why consent makes such a moral difference. What about the lottery idea. Does that count as consent? Remember, at the beginning, Dudley proposed a lottery. Suppose that they had agreed to a lottery. Then how many would then say it was all right. Supposed there were a lottery, cabin boy lost, and the rest of the story unfolded. Then how many people would say it was morally permissible? So the numbers are rising if we add a lottery. Let's hear from one of you for whom the lottery would make a moral difference. Why would it?
Matt: I think the, ah, essential element in my mind that makes it a crime is the idea that they decided at some point that their lives were more important than his, and that, I mean that's kind of the basis for really any crime, right? It's like my needs, my desires are more important than yours and mine take precedent. And if they had done a lottery where everyone concented that someone should die, and it's sort of like they're all sacrificing themselves to save the rest.
Michael Sandel: Then it would be all right.
Matt: A little grotesque, but...
Michael Sandel: But morally permissible?
Matt: Yes.
Michael Sandel: And what's your name?
Matt: Matt.
Michael Sandel: So, Matt, for you, what bothers you is not the cannibalism but the lack of due process.
Matt: I guess you could say that.
Michael Sandel: Right. And can someone who agrees with Matt say a little bit more about why a lottery would make it, in your view, morally permissible. Go ahead.
Student 4: The way I understood it originally was that that was the whole issue, is that the cabin boy was never consulted about whether or not something was gonna happen to him even with the original lottery, whether or not he would be a part of that, it was just decided that he was the one that was going to die.
Michael Sandel: Right. That's what happened in the actual case.
Student 4: Right.
Michael Sandel: But if there were a lottery, and they'd all agreed to the procedure, you think that would be OK.
Student 4: Right, because then everyone knows that there's gonna be a death, whereas you know, the cabin boy didn't know that this discussion was even happening. There was no, you know, forewarning for him to know that, hey, I may be the one that's dying.
Michael Sandel: Alright, now suppose he, everyone agrees to the lottery, they have the lottery, the cabin boy loses and he changes his mind.
Student 4: You've already decided. It's like a verbal contract. You can't go back on that. You've decided, the decision was made, you know, if you know you're dying for, you know the reason, for others to live, you would, if someone else had died, you know that you would consume them. So that's....
Michael Sandel: Right, but I, but then he could say, "I know, but I lost."
Student 4: I just think that's the whole moral issue, that there's no consulting of the cabin boy, and that's what makes it the most horrible, is that he had no idea what was even going on. That had he known what was going on, it would be a bit more understandable.
Michael Sandel: Alright. Good. Now I want to hear, so there are some who think it's morally permissible, but only about 20%, ah, led by Marcus. Then there are some who say, the real problem here is the lack of consent. Whether the lack of consent to a lottery to a fair procedure, or, Kathleen's idea, lack of consent at the moment of death. And if we add consent, then more people are willing to consider the sacrifice morally justified. I want to hear now, finally, from those of you who think, even with consent, even with the lottery, even with a final murmur of consent by Parker at the very last moment, it would still be wrong. And why would it be wrong? That's what I want to hear. Yes.
Student 5: Well the whole time I've been leaning all towards the categorical moral reasoning, and I think that there's a possibility I'd be OK with the idea of the lottery and then the loser taking into their own hands to kill themselves, umm, so there wouldn't be, you know, an active murder, but I still think that even that way, it's coerced. And umm also, I don't think that there's any remorse. Like in Dudley's diary, we were eating our breakfast, it seems as though he's just sort of like, um , you know, the, the whole idea of not valuing someone else's life, so that makes me be feel like I have to take the categorical...
Michael Sandel: You want to throw the book at him. When he lacks remorse or a sense of having done anything wrong.
Student 5: Right.
Michael Sandel: So, alright. Good. Other, any other defenders of a, who say categorically, wrong with or without consent. Yes, stand up. Why?
Student 6: I think undoubtedly the way our society is shaped, murder is murder. Murder is murder and in every way our society looks at murder down, down on it in the same light, and I don't think it's any different in any case.
Michael Sandel: Good. Let me ask you a question. There were three lives at stake, versus one.
Student 6: OK.
Michael Sandel: The one, the cabin boy, he had no family, he had no dependents, these other three had families back home in England. They had dependents, they had wives and children. Think back to Bentham. Bentham says we have to consider the welfare, utility, the happiness of everybody. We have to add it all up. So it's not just numbers, three against one, it's also all of those people at home. In fact the London newspaper at the time and popular opinion sympathized with them. Dudley and Stephen and the papers said if they weren't motivated by affection and concerned for their loved ones at home and their dependants, surely they wouldn't have done this.
Student 6: Yeah and how is that any different from people on the corner trying, have the same desire to feed their family. I don't think it's any different. I think, in any case, if I'm murdering you to advance my status, that's murder. And I think we should look at that all in the same light, instead of criminalizing certain activities, and , ah, and, and, making certain things seem more violent and savage, when in the same case, it's, it's all the same. It's all the same act and the mentality that goes into the murder necessity to feed your family, so...
Michael Sandel: Suppose that weren't three, suppose it were thirty, three hundred, one life to save three hundred. Or in wartime, three thousand. Suppose the stakes are even bigger.
Student 6: Supposed the stakes are even bigger. I think it's still the right thing to do.
Michael Sandel: You think Bentham is wrong to say the same deal is to add up the collective happiness. You think he's wrong about that?
Student 6: I don't think he's wrong, but I think murder is murder in any case.
Michael Sandel: Well then Bentham has to be wrong. If you're right he's wrong.
Student 6: OK then he's wrong.
Michael Sandel: Alright. Thank you. Well done. Alright, let's step back from this discussion and notice how many objections have we heard to what they did. We heard some defenses of what they did. The defenses had to do with necessity, their dire circumstance, and implicitly at least, the idea that numbers matter. And not only numbers matter, but the wider affects matter. Their families back home, their dependents. Parker was an orphan. No one would miss him. So if you add up, if you try to calculate the balance of happiness and suffering, you might have a case for saying what they did was the right thing. Then we heard at least three different types of objections. We heard an objection that said what they did was categorically wrong, like here at the end, categorically wrong. Murder is murder is always wrong, even if it increases the overall happiness of society. A categorical objection. But we still need to investigate why murder is categorically wrong. Is it because even cabin boys have certain fundamental rights? And if that's the reason, where do those rights come from if not from some idea of the larger welfare or utility or happiness? Question number one. Others said a lottery would make a difference. A fair procedure, Matt said. But, and some people were swayed by that. That's not a categorical objection exactly; it's saying everybody has to be counted as an equal even though at the end of the day one can be sacrificed for the general welfare. That leaves us with another question to investigate. Why does agreement to a certain procedure even, a fair procedure, justify whatever result flows from the operation of that procedure? Question number two. And question number three, the basic idea of consent. Kathleen got us onto this. If the cabin boy had agreed himself, and not under duress, as was added, then it would be alright to take his life to save the rest. And even more people signed on to that idea. But that raises a third philosophical question. What is the moral work that consent does? Why does an act of consent make such a moral difference that an act that would be wrong, taking a life, without consent is morally permissible with consent. To investigate those three questions, we're going to have to read some philosophers. And starting next time, we're going to read Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarian philosophers.
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書籍紹介 - 読んでみよう !
Michael Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2009. ISBN 0374180652
邦訳『これからの「正義」の話をしよう: いまを生き延びるための哲学』（鬼澤忍訳、早川書房、2010年、ISBN 978-4152091314）
