Making Mortal Choices: Three Exercises in Moral Casuistry

by Hugo Adam Bedau

Overview

The answer, to crew and passengers aboard the sinking lifeboat, must have seemed both grimly obvious and unthinkably alien. To save the lives of many, the lives of some would have to be sacrificed. With seawater crashing over the gunwhales, only a lightening of the human cargo would keep the craft afloat. In a procedure that took much of the night, fourteen men and two women were consigned to watery graves.

This notorious event, aftermath to the sinking of the William Brown in 1841, represents a shocking example of life and death decision-making, a case where cruel circumstance would seem to argue the permissibility of taking innocent human life. In Making Mortal Choices, philosopher Hugo Bedau examines this case as well as two similar cases of hypothetical origin, generating a remarkably clear and accessible demonstration of philosophical reasoning in cases where it must be decided who ought to survive when not all can.

Bedau's approach, a form of practical ethics descended from the ancient (and oftmisunderstood) method of casuistry, involves solving complex moral problems in careful analytic increments and only after a broad canvassing of possibilities, rather than through the top-down application of some general moral theory or principle.

Aimed at both general readers and philosophers interested in the revival of casuistic method, Making Mortal Choices illuminates not only how we reason in life and death situations, but also how we ought to reason if we wish both to be consistent and to properly respect human life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195108774
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/09/1997
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	8.86(w) x 5.88(h) x 0.57(d)
Lexile:	1370L (what's this?)

About the Author

Hugo Adam Bedau is Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the author or editor of several books on civil disobedience and on the death penalty, including his most recent, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (OUP, 1997).

Table of Contents

1	Seaman Holmes and the Sinking of the William Brown	5
2	The Speluncean Explorers and the Death of Roger Whetmore	41
3	Jim and the Indians in the Jungle Clearing	71
Appendix	The Historical Background of Casuistry	101
	Notes	107
	Index	119

Editorial Reviews

Three essays originally delivered at Tufts University in the spring of 1995, along with an appendix reviewing the historical background of casuistry, a form of practical ethics that focuses on particular cases, real or hypothetical, to construct principles. The examples here are a real shipwreck, and hypothetical cannibalism among explorers trapped in a cave and killing one innocent to allow the others to live. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"At once sophisticated, fascinating, and highly readable and accessible by a non-philosophy audience."—Norman Daniels, Tufts University

"The essays do an excellent job of motivating philosophical thought and exhibiting the worth of philosophical reflection. In addition they deepen the reader's understanding of both life and death choices and various important moral principles."—Stephen Nathanson, Northeastern University

From the Publisher