I have just watched a lecture called Justice given by Michael Sandel, a professor of Harvard University. He put forward some controversial cases to raise students’ interests and to illustrate his topic. Here I want to express my opinion on two of these cases. The two cases are as follows:

Case 1: Suppose you are the driver of a trolley car, your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 6mph. at the end of the track; you notice five workers are working on the track. You try to stop, but you can’t, for your brakes don’t work. You feel desperate, because you know if you crash into these five workers, they will all die. You feel helpless until you notice odd to the right, a side track. At the end of that track, there’s one worker working on the track. Your steering wheel works. So you can tune the trolley car, if you want to, onto the side track, killing the one, but sparing the five. What would you do?

Case 2：You are an onlooker. You are standing on a bridge, overlooking a trolley car track. Down the track comes the 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 are 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 could spare the five. What would you do, would you push the fat man over the bridge to save the other five?

My response to this is that in the first situation, I will tune the trolley car, killing the one, but sparing the five; while in the second situation I wouldn’t push the fat man even if sacrificing him could save the other five.

From my perspective, in the first case, I am the driver, the direct involver of the accident. No matter what choice I make, I would kill someone for sure. In order to lessen casualty and guilt, I would choose killing the one, saving the five. Maybe influenced by our culture, at the situation, I would explain for myself that the majority is weight over the minority.

As for the second case, maybe I am a little selfish. In my view, apart from the fact that I dare not to involve into a murder, I and the fat man are onlookers. Originally we have nothing to do with the accident. If I push the fat man, it means that I murder an innocent person. According to my common sense, it is not only an immoral deed, but also a crime. Even I know clearly if I can do something to save the five people, however I do nothing but witness the tragedy; it is also immoral. Whereas I would insist not to push the innocent fat man.

Frankly speaking, I am confused and have no idea of what the morality actually is. Sacrificing the minority to maintain the majority’s interests is the right principle. Or respecting the minority regardless of the majority is the right one. Does it have a fixed assessing standard? Or does it vary now and then? If so, under what situation, the former is right or contrary. That’s really a tough question need further discussing.

And what's your view?