When I was at home during the Spring Festival, I began to sort out the text content of this video. I am technically illiterate and can't find a better manuscript, so I have to simply deal with the resources at hand, hoping to be useful to everyone.

This lecture is based on Introduction to Fairness and Justice by Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard University. It is a series of introductions to morality and political philosophy.

This lecture * * * 12 episode invites the audience to think critically about basic issues such as justice, fairness, democracy and civil rights. At Harvard University, more than 1000 students attend this course taught by professor and writer MichaelSandel every week. They are eager to expand their understanding of political and moral philosophy and test their long-held beliefs. Students learn the philosophical theories of great philosophers in the past-Aristotle, Kant, Mill and Locke-and then use what they have learned to think about various problems in the complicated and turbulent modern society, including anti-discrimination action, same-sex marriage, patriotism, loyalty and human rights.

Speaker: Michael Sandel (Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University)

Lecture 1: the moral aspects of murder

If you had to choose to kill 1 person or 5 people, what would you choose? What is the correct method? Professor MichaelSandel put forward this hypothetical scenario in his lecture, and most students voted for killing 1 person to save the lives of five others. But Sandel raised three similar moral dilemmas-each of which was so cleverly designed that the choice became more difficult. When the students stood up to defend their difficult choices, Sandel put forward his own views. The assumptions behind our moral reasoning are often contradictory, and the question of what is right and wrong is not always black and white.

Justice: What should I do? 1

Imagine you are a tram driver.

Your tram goes 60 miles an hour.

You find five workers working at the end of the track.

You tried your best to stop, but you couldn't.

Your handbrake is broken.

You feel desperate because you know.

If you meet these five workers,

They will die.

You'll know soon enough.

You don't know what to do.

Until you find out

At the end of the electric rail, there is just a fork.

At the end of the electric rail, there is just a fork.

At that fork in the road, there were only 1 worker.

Your steering wheel is still working.

So you can choose to transfer the tram to that fork in the road.

It hit 1 worker, but saved five others.

Now I want to ask the first question.

What should we do?

What would you do?

Let's take a vote.

How many people will choose to turn into a fork in the road?

Raise your hand.

How many people choose to go straight?

Few people will. Most of them chose to change direction.

Let's listen first. Now we need to study the reason why you did it.

Listen to the opinions of most people first.

Who chooses to turn to the fork in the road?

Why are you doing this? What's your reason?

Who wants to talk about your thoughts?

If you can only kill one person, killing five people is definitely wrong.

If you can only kill one person, killing five people is definitely wrong.

This is a good reason.

Who else? Does anyone agree with this idea? Why?

I think this is the same as the 9/ 1 1 event.

We regard the people who crashed the plane in the open space of Pennsylvania as heroes.

Because they chose to sacrifice the people on the plane instead of crashing into the building.

Therefore, the principle is the same, although it all happens in tragic situations.

For five people to survive, it is worthwhile to sacrifice one person.

Are you the majority, too? Do you want to?

Now let's listen to those ethnic minorities.

I think this is the same as genocide and totalitarianism.

To save one race, you can kill others.

So, what would you do in this situation?

In order to avoid doing something like genocide.

You'd rather bump into those five workers.

Theoretically, yes.

All right. Who else? This is a bold idea. thank you

Let's consider another situation.

Look at you, most people.

Why in this case, your principle is to sacrifice one person to save five people?

Now, you are not a tram driver, you are just a bystander.

You stand on the bridge overlooking the electric track of the tram.

There are five workers at the end along this track.

The handbrake of the tram still doesn't work.

The tram is about to hit those five workers.

Now you are not a driver.

You really feel helpless.

Suddenly, you see standing next to you.

There is also a very fat man on the bridge.

You can give him a push.

He will fall into orbit.

Just enough to stop the tram.

He will die, but he can save five others.

Now, how many people will push that fat man. Raise your hand.

How many people won't do this? Most people don't.

The problem is obvious.

What is the principle of your choice every time?

Sacrifice one and save more people.

For the first case, almost everyone agrees. Why?

I want to hear the opinions of those who are on the side of the majority in both cases.

How do you explain the difference between the two?

In the second case, I think it involves the question of choice.

The fat man was not involved in the accident.

In my opinion, the second situation is better than the first.

That fat man can choose to stay out of it.

But in the first case, the driver and the workers on both sides are involved.

However, the man standing at the fork in the road

He won't want to sacrifice himself more than that fat man, will he?

This is a fact. But he's at a fork in the road.

Fat man is also on the bridge.

You can go on talking, or talk about it later.

All right. This is a difficult problem. You are doing very well.

Who else can find two different ways to reconcile?

I think in the first case, we must choose between sacrificing 1 worker or five other workers.

The choices we have to make

Those workers died in that tram, which was not your direct behavior.

The tram got out of control, and then you closed your choice.

And pushing the fat man is your voluntary choice.

You have the ability to push or not, but you can't control the tram from hitting everyone.

So I think the two are slightly different.

All right. Who wants to respond to his idea? That's good.

Who wants to respond? Is there a better explanation?

I don't think this is a good reason.

In both cases, you choose to kill.

Because of the former, you choose to turn to the workers on the fork, which is your conscious behavior.

In the latter case, it is also a deliberate act for you to push the fat man.

So in any case, it was intentional.

Do you want to respond?

I'm not sure, it's true.

This seems different.

Push the fat man onto the electric track, and he will die.

You'll kill him.

You're killing him yourself

This is not the same as overturning a tram and then killing others.

That doesn't sound right, does it?

That's good. What's your name?

Let me ask you a question, Andrew.

Suppose on the bridge, I don't have to push the fat man.

Suppose he stands in a trap, I can open it like turning the steering wheel.

I don't know why, it seems wrong.

I mean, maybe you accidentally pressed the steering wheel of that trap.

Or for other reasons, it happened.

Or, due to a mistake, the tram turned to that fork.

I might agree.

All right. What is right in the first case becomes wrong in the second case.

Moreover, in the first case, you are directly involved in the accident.

Second, you are a bystander.

So you can choose to step in or not to push the fat man.

Let's put this story aside.

Let's imagine another situation.

At this time, you are a doctor in the emergency room, and six patients come to see you.

They have just experienced a tram accident.

Five of them were moderately injured and 1 person was seriously injured.

You can spend the whole day taking care of this seriously injured patient.

But in this case, the other five people will die.

Or you can take care of those five first, and then come to see the seriously injured patient.

But seriously injured patients will also die.

Now that you are a doctor, how many people will choose those five patients first?

How many people choose to save the seriously injured first?

Very few people. Only a handful of people.

I think your reasons are the same as before. 1 life pair 5.

Now consider a situation. You are a surgeon this time.

You have five patients. Every urgent need

organ transplantation

One needs a heart, one needs a lung, one needs a kidney and one needs a liver.

The fifth person wants the pancreas.

But there are no transplantable organs now. You will watch them die.

You suddenly find yourself in the next ward.

There is a healthy guy, to check his health.

He is dozing off.

You can walk in quietly,

Take out that guy's insides, of course he'll die.

But you can save five other patients.

How many of you are willing to do this?

Is there anyone else?

Hands up.

Is there anyone else, including the one on the second floor?

I can

Be careful, don't fall down

How many people won't do this?

All right. What did you think of the students on the second floor just now?

I was actually wondering if there were any other possible alternatives.

First, donate the organ of the first of the five dying patients.

In this way, his healthy organs can save the other four.

That's a good idea.

It's a pity that you avoided the philosophical point we were going to discuss.

Let's look back at these stories and these arguments.

What are the ways to pay attention?

Please note that our argument revolves around these points.

Our discussion touched on some moral principles.

Our discussion touched on some moral principles.

Let's review, what are the moral principles?

The first moral principle is that,

Do the right thing, the moral thing.

Depends on the consequences of our actions

If in the end, you can save five lives, even if it is worth sacrificing one.

This is a good example of a result-oriented school.

The moral reasoning of consequentialism depends on the consequences of moral behavior.

It depends on our final result.

However, we considered another situation.

In this case, people's moral reasoning principle of consequentialism is not so firm.

For example, we are hesitating about the fat man standing on the bridge.

Or remove the organs of that innocent patient.

When people are thinking about what to do.

Will consider the behavior itself.

It's not just the consequences of behavior.

People changed their minds.

People think it is wrong to do so, and the behavior itself is wrong.

Even to save more lives, it is wrong to kill innocent people.

People think that the second situation is wrong.

This is another principle of moral reasoning.

Absolute moral reasoning holds that morality has its absolute moral principles.

Clear responsibilities and rights, regardless of the consequences.

We will discuss this issue today and in the next few weeks.

Discuss the similarities and differences between consequentialism and absolutism.

One of the most famous examples of consequentialist moral reasoning

Is utilitarianism, bentham put forward.

He was a political philosopher in England from 65438 to 2008.

One of the most important absolutist philosophers

Is18th century German philosopher Kant.

Therefore, let's look at these two different moral reasoning models.

Evaluate them and consider other alternative theories.

From the syllabus, you will find that we will read some very famous books.

Aristotle, Locke, Kant, John? Mill et al

From the syllabus, you will see that we don't just read these books.

We also discuss contemporary political and legal disputes.

The philosophical problems behind the discussion.

We will discuss what is equality and inequality.

Affirmative action, freedom of speech, offensive speech

Same-sex marriage, conscription

A series of practical problems

Why? Because we should not only truly feel such an abstract and distant book.

We should also seriously discuss some problems in daily life.

Including our political life,

So we read these books and we will discuss these issues.

We will see the connection between them.

This sounds very attractive.

But here, I want to remind you.

My reminder is that

Read these books.

As a kind of self-awareness training

Reading these books is risky.

Personal political adventure

Every student of political philosophy knows the risks.

These risks stem from one fact.

Philosophy will enlighten us, and disturbance will make us

In the face, we already know that we

The irony is the difficulty of learning this course.

In fact, including what it teaches, we already know.

It will turn a blind eye to what we all see.

Make it strange

The example I just gave is an example.

The scenario we assumed at the beginning.

A blend of fun and seriousness.

It is also in these books that philosophy makes us familiar with things.

Become strange. It is not to provide new information.

It just makes us look at these things in a new way.

But that's the risk.

Once the familiar becomes strange, it will never be the same as before.

Self-knowledge is like a lost person.

No matter how annoying you think it is.

You can't help thinking about these problems.

What makes this exploration both difficult and interesting?

Because morality and political philosophy are like a story.

You don't know how the story will develop.

But you know, this is a story about you.

These are all personal risks. So where is the political risk?

I can describe this course like this. It promises you.

By reading these books and discussing these problems

You will become a more responsible citizen.

You will re-examine your past ideas and policies.

You will train your political judgment.

You will participate in public affairs more effectively.

But this will be a one-sided and misleading commitment.

Most political philosophy is not like this.

Studying political philosophy will make it possible for you.

Become a worse citizen.

Not better.

Or, at least before you become a good citizen, let you become a bad citizen.

That's because philosophy is a distant thing.

Even destructive activities.

This can be traced back to Socrates.

Socrates had such a wonderful conversation with one of his friends.

Trying to persuade people to give up philosophy

# # Tell Socrates that philosophy is a good doll.

If you just indulge in it moderately, and at the right time in your life,

But if you pursue it too much,

It will definitely hurt you.

Take my advice and say "# #"

Give up your argument. Know what will make you successful (? )

Don't study people who say seemingly beautiful things, but in fact they are ambiguous.

To study people who have a good life and are famous.

# # is sincerely said to Socrates.

Give up philosophy. Find something really visible. Or go to business school.

# # One thing is really right.

Philosophy has really alienated us.

Our past conventions, pre-set assumptions, and inherent ideas.

These are personal and political risks.

Faced with these risks, we have a special way to avoid them.

Avoidance is called doubt.

Skepticism is like this.

We won't solve the problem completely.

Whether it's a case or the principle we discussed at the beginning

If Aristotle, Locke, Kant and Mill

After so many years, these problems have not been solved.

Who do you think we are? We sat at Saunders Theatre.

These problems can be solved after one semester.

Perhaps, as long as everyone sticks to his principles.

We have nothing to say about other people's principles.

Don't reason and think.

This is an escape, an escape from doubt.

I would like to give the following answers to everyone present.

These issues have indeed been debated for a long time.

In fact, these questions and discussions are still repeated.

This may mean that, in a sense, they are impossible.

In another case, they are inevitable.

The reason they are unavoidable is that

Because we live in the answers to these questions.

So, skepticism will only make you let go,

Giving up thinking about moral issues is not the answer.

Kant once described skepticism well.

He wrote that skepticism is a resting place for human reasoning.

It just makes us wander between some dogmas.

This is not the best place for us to live.

Skepticism is simply acquiescence, which is not enough to withstand "reckless" reasoning.

I tried to present these stories, these arguments.

There may be risks.

Finally, let me summarize.

The purpose of this course is to awaken our reckless reasoning.

See where we end up.

thank you