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94 Yale L. J. 1395 (1984-1985)
The Trolley Problem

handle is hein.journals/ylr94 and id is 1415 raw text is: Comments The Trolley Problem Judith Jarvis Thomsonf I. Some years ago, Philippa Foot drew attention to an extraordinarily in- teresting problem. Suppose you are the driver of a trolley. The trolley rounds a bend, and there come into view ahead five track workmen, who have been repairing the track. The track goes through a bit of a valley at that point, and the sides are steep, so you must stop the trolley if you are to avoid running the five men down. You step on the brakes, but alas they don't work. Now you suddenly see a spur of track leading off to the right. You can turn the trolley onto it, and thus save the five men on the straight track ahead. Unfortunately, Mrs. Foot has arranged that there is one track workman on that spur of track. He can no more get off the track in time than the five can, so you will kill him if you turn the trolley onto him. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley? Everybody to whom I have put this hypothetical case says, Yes, it is.2 Some people say something stronger than that it is morally permissible for you to turn the trolley: They say that morally speaking, you must turn it-that morality requires you to do so. Others do not agree that morality t Professor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. B.A., Barnard College 1950, Cambridge University 1952; M.A., Cambridge University 1956; Ph.D., Columbia University 1959. Many people have given me helpful criticism of this essay's many successive reincarnations over the years; I cannot list them all-for want of space, not of gratitude. Most recently, it benefited from criticism by the members of the Yale Law School Civil Liability Workshop and the Legal Theory Workshop, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. 1. See P. FOOT, The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect, in VIRTUES AND VICES AND OTHER ESSAYS IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY 19 (1978). 2. I think it possible (though by no means certain) that John Taurek would say No, it is not permissible to (all simply) turn the trolley; what you ought to do is flip a coin. See Taurek, Should the Numbers Count?, 6 PHIL. & PuB. AFF. 293 (1977). (But he is there concerned with a different kind of case, namely that in which what is in question is not whether we may do what harms one to avoid harming five, but whether we may or ought to choose to save five in preference to saving one.) For criticism of Taurek's article, see Parfit, Innumerate Ethics, 7 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 285 (1978). 1395

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