Argumentative Essay On The Trolley Problem

This argument also explains why Hitler’s actions, which were, and continue to be, reprimanded by the international community, were not justified.
While Hitler believed that a mass killing of the Jews was essential for the development of Germany, and killing them was for the greater good of the country, this viewpoint was treated with contempt by the international community. This raises the question of what can be considered to be the ‘greater good’ and under what circumstances can this be used as an explanation for committing homicide/ murder? To a large extent, people believe that the lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few. This idea can be explained with the help of a thought experiment presented by Philippa Foot in 1967: the Trolley Problem. This problem presents the following situation:
A runaway trolley is heading down the tracks toward five workers who will all be killed if the trolley proceeds on its present course. You are standing next to a large switch that can divert the trolley onto a different track. The only way to save the lives of the five workers is to divert
In this problem, the one worker on the second track is replaced by your friend or family member. As we can see the problem is not very different from the one presented above; the choice remains between saving one person or saving 5 of them. However, the answer to the question, ‘Will you flip the switch?’ changes. The reason for this change is simple. When having to choose between your loved one and a group of strangers, one would choose to protect their loved one. Hence, one can conclude that while ‘every human life matters,’ for most people every human life doesn’t matter equally; we value the lives of some people over others. Yet again, this goes on the prove that moral decisions are often situational, and one cannot, with complete authority, state that certain acts like killing are absolutely