This lecture opens the “Justice” course by throwing the audience straight into moral panic on purpose. Instead of starting with definitions, the instructor starts with a situation where you must choose—because that’s what moral life is like. The goal is to show that even ordinary people, without any philosophy training, already carry strong moral instincts… but those instincts often clash with each other.
The core setup is the trolley problem. A runaway trolley is headed toward five workers. If you do nothing, five die. If you pull a lever to redirect it onto another track, one worker dies instead. Most people say they would pull the lever. The class response reveals something important: many of us instinctively accept a trade-off when it reduces total harm. That natural response sounds like a “numbers” approach—minimize deaths, maximize lives saved—what the course later calls consequentialist thinking.
Then the lecture repeats the same math in a new form: you’re on a bridge above the trolley with a heavy man next to you. If you push him off, his body stops the trolley, saving five, but killing him. Now the majority refuses. The instructor uses this shift to force the real question: if “five saved vs. one lost” was enough before, why isn’t it enough now? Something in us reacts to how the harm is done—not just how much harm happens.
To widen the pattern, the lecture introduces medical analogies. In an emergency room, a doctor can save either one severely injured patient or five moderately injured ones. Most choose saving five—again, outcome-based logic. But when the scenario becomes organ harvesting—killing one healthy person to save five patients needing transplants—almost everyone rejects it. The lecture highlights this as a clear boundary in moral intuition: many people believe there are acts you simply don’t get to do to an innocent person, even for a “better” outcome.
At this stage, the course frames two broad moral languages without fully resolving them. One language focuses on results: the right action is the one that produces the best overall consequences. Another language focuses on principle: some actions are wrong in themselves, even if the results look “better.” The instructor emphasizes that philosophy begins when you notice your own mind contradicting itself: you approve of sacrifice in one case, but condemn it in another that looks mathematically identical.
Finally, the lecture warns the audience that philosophical thinking is not “safe.” Once you start asking what justice really means, you might become uncomfortable with your own beliefs, your politics, your reflexes, even your sense of identity. The class is invited to argue, disagree, and test ideas—not to win, but to discover what their moral instincts are actually made of.
Part 2
Part two deepens the conflict: the instructor doesn’t let the class hide behind “it just feels wrong.” Instead, the lecture presses: what exactly is the moral difference between turning a trolley and pushing a person? If morality is only arithmetic, both should be equal. But if morality includes something else—rights, dignity, intention—then the difference becomes morally decisive.
The discussion starts to separate “doing harm” from “allowing harm,” and “intending harm” from “foreseeing harm.” Pulling a lever feels like redirecting a threat already in motion, while pushing someone feels like making a person into a physical instrument. Even people who like consequence-based reasoning often hesitate when they hear the phrase “use him to stop the trolley.” That language exposes a deeper moral intuition: humans aren’t supposed to be treated as objects or tools—even when the tool-use saves more lives.
Then the lecture turns to the idea of categorical moral limits—boundaries that don’t bend even when the outcome is attractive. This is where the course introduces the tension between two moral instincts that most people carry at the same time:
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one instinct that says “prevent the most suffering,”
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and another instinct that says “some lines can’t be crossed.”
The medical transplant case becomes the clearest example of that second instinct. People accept triage decisions (saving five over one) because nobody is being deliberately selected as a victim. But in the transplant scenario, a healthy person becomes the planned target. The class reaction shows that many believe innocence creates a kind of moral shield: you don’t get to kill someone who isn’t threatening anyone, even if the math looks heroic.
This part also sets up why philosophers matter. The instructor explains that these dilemmas aren’t meant to be solved like riddles; they’re meant to expose the structure of your moral reasoning. If you favor outcomes, you must explain why “pushing” is different from “pulling.” If you favor absolute rules, you must explain why letting five die isn’t also a moral failure. Either way, you’re forced to defend your values in a way that everyday life rarely demands.
By the end of Part 2, the class is standing at the doorway of the course: the fight between consequences and principles is no longer abstract. It’s personal. Because whichever side you lean toward, you will eventually be pushed into a corner where your own logic demands something you don’t want to admit.
Part 3
Part three connects the classroom puzzles to real life by introducing a famous legal case: Queen v. Dudley and Stephens. This is the moment where the lecture essentially says: “You think this is just philosophy? Courts have faced this exact horror.”
The case is brutal. After a shipwreck, four sailors are stranded with no food or water. After days of starvation, two of them kill the weakest member—a cabin boy named Richard Parker—and they eat him to survive. Their defense is “necessity”: if they hadn’t done it, all would have died. The case forces the same moral collision as the trolley problem, but now with real blood, real fear, and real law.
The classroom debate immediately fractures into competing moral frames. One side argues that survival changes everything: desperate conditions create a tragic permission—especially if the alternative is total death. Another side refuses to grant that permission, insisting that murder is still murder, and necessity cannot turn an innocent person into an acceptable sacrifice. The instructor uses this clash to show how moral reasoning becomes a tug-of-war between compassion for circumstance and the need for moral limits.
Then the lecture sharpens the knife further by raising the “fairness procedure” idea: what if they had drawn lots? If everyone had equal risk, would killing be less wrong? Students often feel the pull of that argument because a lottery seems “fair.” But the lecture also reveals why fairness doesn’t automatically create moral permission. A lottery might distribute terror evenly, but it still ends with someone being intentionally killed. So the question becomes: does fair procedure justify an immoral act, or does it simply make an immoral act feel cleaner?
Next comes the hardest concept: consent. What if the boy had agreed? Would that make it moral? Some people say yes, because consent respects autonomy. Others reject it because starvation and fear destroy meaningful consent—agreeing under coercion isn’t truly free. The lecture uses this to expose another major theme of justice: sometimes the appearance of choice is not the reality of choice, and law must decide whether a “yes” given under pressure counts as a real yes.
By the end, the instructor makes the point that the course is not about giving comforting answers. It’s about training the mind to face the hardest questions without running away. The trolley problem, the transplant case, and Dudley & Stephens all serve the same purpose: they force you to ask what justice is built on—maximizing life, protecting rights, respecting dignity, honoring consent, following duty, or something else entirely.
The closing tone is a warning and an invitation. Moral reflection is unavoidable: you can pretend to avoid philosophy, but every judgment you make already contains a philosophy. The course is simply making you honest about it.
