#마이클샌델 - 하버드 특강 '정의' 제01강 벤담의 공리주의

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

1) Two moral test cases: “trolley” dilemmas reveal different moral logics

Case 1 (driver at a switch)

• A trolley is out of control, heading toward five workers.
• You can divert it onto a side track, where it will kill one worker instead.
• Majority view: it’s right to turn (save five, kill one).

Case 2 (bridge and “large man”)

• You are not the driver; you’re an onlooker on a bridge.
• Five workers will die unless you push a large man off the bridge to stop the trolley.
• The large man dies; five are spared.
• Majority view shifts: most people don’t push.

Key question

• Why do people accept “kill one to save five” in Case 1 but refuse it in Case 2?

Proposed explanations and debate

• Some claim Case 1 is not direct killing by you: you merely change direction, rather than personally killing.
• Others argue the moral difference is overstated: in both cases someone must be chosen and a deliberate act occurs.
• Another line of reasoning distinguishes:
  • Driving vs. pushing (turning a trolley vs. intervening with your hands),
  • control and immediacy, and
  • whether the victim is “already in the situation” or “not involved until you intervene.”

Methodological takeaway

• People’s moral judgments seem sensitive not only to outcomes, but also to the type of act and how harm is caused.

---

2) Extension to medical dilemmas: still contrasts outcomes vs. intrinsic wrongness

ER triage case

• One patient is severely injured; five will die if you spend all day on the one.
• Options: save one or save five.
• Many again choose saving five.

Organ transplant case

• Five people need different organs (heart, lung, kidney, liver, pancreas).
• There are no donors, but there’s a healthy person nearby.
• Option: quietly kill the healthy person to harvest organs, saving the five.
• Many hesitate or refuse—suggesting discomfort with killing the innocent for instrumental purposes.

Takeaway

• Even when consequences match (“one life for five”), people resist when the act violates something about the innocence/intrinsic nature of the killing.

---

3) Two major approaches to moral reasoning emerge

The instructor frames two “categorical vs. consequential” modes:

• A) Consequentialist moral reasoning

  • Core claim: the morality of an action depends on its end-day consequences.
  • If the action produces better overall outcomes, it is right.

• B) Categorical moral reasoning

  • Core claim: morality depends on moral requirements/duties/rights independent of outcomes.
  • Some acts are wrong even if they lead to a good outcome (e.g., saving many by killing an innocent).

Planned course direction: the contrast between consequentialist and categorical principles will be explored further.

---

4) Introducing utilitarianism (Bentham) as a consequentialist theory

• Utilitarianism’s central idea (via Jeremy Bentham):
  • The right/just action is the one that maximizes “utility.”

Utility defined

• “the balance of pleasure over pain” / “happiness over suffering”

Generalization

• Applies to individual choices and to lawmaking: citizens/legislators should aim at maximum overall happiness.

Slogan

• “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Next step: test utilitarian reasoning through a famous legal/moral case.

---

5) “Queen v. Dudley and Stephens” (necessity, numbers, murder, consent)

Story facts (shipwreck “Mignonette”)

• Four crew members survive in a lifeboat with almost no food/water for many days.
• They initially survive on preserved turnips and a turtle.
• Eventually they face starvation.
• Cabin boy Richard Parker (17) becomes ill and is near death after drinking seawater.
• On day 19, Dudley proposes a lottery to decide whose life will be sacrificed.
• Brooks refuses; no lottery occurs.
• Dudley kills Parker with a penknife, and Brooks assists in eating Parker’s flesh over several days.
• They are later rescued after about 24 days.
• They are arrested and tried; the case becomes famous.

Jury-style moral polling

• The group votes on whether the act is morally permissible (acquittal) vs. morally wrong (conviction).
• Multiple arguments emerge.

Defense themes (some moral permission)

• Moral vs. legal responsibility: necessity can reduce moral culpability even if the law is violated (an “excuse/lessening” view).
• Necessity/inevitable sacrifice: if survival requires someone to be sacrificed, then doing so is required.
• Indirect utilitarian framing: saving the majority yields benefits for society (families back home, productivity, etc.).
• Disagreement about the “kinds of wrong”: some argue the key is weighing overall happiness and suffering, not the act’s categorical status.

Prosecution themes (moral prohibition)

• No right to decide others’ life/death: extreme circumstances don’t grant that authority.
• Skepticism about “it was necessary”:
  • mental state/duress arguments are challenged,
  • some claim they could have reasoned differently.

Consent and lottery as moral “variables”

• Consent (e.g., would it be different if Parker agreed?)

  • Many argue consent doesn’t make it morally permissible, especially if coerced, lacks real choice, or lacks meaningful informed consent.
  • Some argue consent might matter only under specific conditions (e.g., the victim’s initial, non-coerced, informed choice).

• The lottery

  • Some claim a fair procedure (lottery with agreement) could make the outcome morally permissible.
  • Others question why procedure-based consent should justify whichever outcome occurs.

• Deeper philosophical questions raised

  1. If rights exist, where do they come from? (grounded in utility/welfare, or something else?)
  2. Why does agreement to a procedure (even a fair one) morally justify its result?
  3. What moral work does consent do?
     • Why does an act become permissible when consent is present, even if killing without consent would be wrong?

Overall instructional takeaway from Dudley-Stephens

• There are both:
  • Consequentialist-leaning defenses (numbers, necessity, overall welfare), and
  • Categorical objections (murder is murder; rights; constraints on sacrificing innocents).
• The instructor frames next steps as studying utilitarian philosophers (Bentham and John Stuart Mill).

---

6) Course-level warning and purpose: “restlessness of reason”

• The instructor gives a meta-lesson about political philosophy:
  • Studying these questions can disrupt your “familiar, unexamined” views.
  • Once the familiar becomes strange, you can’t fully return to ignorance.
• Aim of the course:
  • To awaken “the restlessness of reason”—keeping moral/political reflection alive rather than slipping into easy skepticism or resignation.

---

7) Summary of the previous lecture’s method (how discussion proceeds)

• The course uses stories to generate:
  1. judgments about cases, then
  2. efforts to articulate the principles behind those judgments.
• When new cases appear, participants:
  • revise principles, and
  • try to align specific-case judgments with general principles.

---

Methodology / “instructions” implied by the lesson (step-by-step)

• Use moral dilemmas to generate intuitions

  • Present hypothetical scenarios (e.g., trolley cases, medical triage/transplant).
  • Collect participant responses (polling, hands raised, volunteers).

• Ask for reasons, not just answers

  • For each case, require an explanation tied to a principle.

• Introduce new cases to test consistency

  • Present a morally similar case with a key difference (e.g., driver vs. pusher; indirect vs. direct killing).
  • Observe whether judgments remain stable.

• Extract candidate principles

  • If judgments track outcomes → suspect consequentialism.
  • If judgments reject acts despite good outcomes → suspect categorical constraints.

• Classify the type of moral theory

  • Label reasoning as consequentialist (outcome-based) or categorical (duty/right-based).

• Escalate to more explicit philosophical theory

  • Introduce a major consequentialist theory (utilitarianism via Bentham).
  • Analyze famous examples/legal cases to test the theory against moral intuitions.

• Refine the questions

  • Identify where disagreements truly lie (necessity? rights? consent? fairness of procedure?).

• Compare theories by answering “why” questions

  • Not only “what do you judge,” but “what moral mechanism makes that judgment right/wrong?”

---

Speakers / sources featured

• Michael Sandel (course lecturer; referenced as “마이클샌델”)
• Jeremy Bentham (18th-century English political philosopher; utilitarianism presented)
• John Stuart Mill (mentioned as part of upcoming readings)
• Immanuel Kant (mentioned in course overview)
• Aristotle and John Locke (mentioned in course overview)
• Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (19th-century British law case)
• Socrates (referenced indirectly via a story of Callicles and Gorgias)
• Callicles (referenced via a summary of a Gorgias-style argument)
• Gorgias (Gorgias dialogue referenced)