ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with three important authors: Herbert L. A. Hart, Philippa Foot and Judith J. Thomson. It presents Hart’s criticism of moral asymmetry between hysterectomy and craniotomy and shows that Hart’s criticism is incorrect.
The following part of the chapter focusses on Philippa Foot. The author presents a series of thought experiments which include morally asymmetrical situations (in one scenario the action is morally licit, in the other it is illicit); this moral asymmetry is well explained precisely by the principle of double effect. She then formulates her theory of positive and negative obligations, which on her view explains the moral asymmetry of the scenarios discussed equally well as the principle of double effect. In her paper The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect of 1967 a runaway tram rushing along rails to a switch behind which five persons are working on one rail and only one on the other is mentioned for the first time. From this an extensive sphere of contemporary ethical and experimental research called trolleyology was born.
Foot laid the foundations of trolleyology, but the discussion developed primarily thanks to the American philosopher and theorist of rights Judith Jarvis Thomson. In this chapter I focus on three thought scenarios that Thomson presents to demonstrate the inadequacy of Foot’s solution and critically discuss them. Next I deal with the Loop case and try to show that advocates of the principle of double effect can apply it to this difficult scenario as well.
