Bøger af Judith Jarvis Thomson

Ein unscheinbarer Aufsatz mit dem Titel »The Trolley Problem« aus dem Jahr 1985 beschäftigt uns bis heute: Angenommen, ein Mensch muss sich entscheiden, ob er eine Straßenbahn (»Trolley«) geradeaus fahren lässt, so dass sie fünf Gleisarbeiter tötet, oder ob er sie auf einen anderen Arbeiter umlenkt. Welche Entscheidung wäre zulässig, und weshalb? Die Frage deutet auf ethische Grundprobleme hin, die im Zeitalter der Maschinenethik - etwa beim autonomen Fahren - ganz neue Aktualität gewinnen. Auch wenn in Zeiten einer Pandemie medizinische Ressourcen knapp werden und nicht mehr alle Patienten behandelt werden können oder wenn Terroristen Passagierflugzeuge entführen und ein Abschuss möglich wäre, drängen sich diese Probleme auf.Die Reihe »Great Papers Philosophie« bietet bahnbrechende Aufsätze der Philosophie:- Eine zeichengenaue, zitierfähige Wiedergabe des Textes (links das fremdsprachige Original, rechts eine neue Übersetzung).- Eine philosophiegeschichtliche Einordnung: Wie dachte man früher über das Problem? Welche Veränderung bewirkte der Aufsatz? Wie denkt man heute darüber?- Eine Analyse des Textes bzw. eine Rekonstruktion seiner Argumentationsstruktur, gefolgt von einem Abschnitt über die Autorin / den Autor sowie ein kommentiertes Literaturverzeichnis.

Judith Jarvis Thomson''s Normativity is a study of normative thought. She brings out that normative thought is not restricted to moral thought. Normative judgments divide into two sub-kinds, the evaluative and the directive; but the sub-kinds are larger than is commonly appreciated. Evaluative judgments include the judgments that such and such is a good umbrella, that Alfred is a witty comedian, and that Bert answered Carol''s question correctly, as well as the judgment that David is a good human being. Directive judgments include the judgment that a toaster should toast evenly, that Edward ought to get a haircut, and that Frances must move her rook, as well as the judgment that George ought to be kind to his little brother. Thomson describes how judgments of these two sub-kinds interconnect and what makes them true when they are true. Given the extensiveness of the two sub-kinds of normative judgment, our everyday thinking is rich in normativity, and moreover, there is no gap between normative and factual thought. The widespread suspicion of the normative is therefore in large measure due to nothing deeper than an excessively narrow conception of what counts as a normative judgment.

How should we live? What do we owe to other people? In Goodness and Advice, the eminent philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson explores how we should go about answering such fundamental questions. In doing so, she makes major advances in moral philosophy, pointing to some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing the structure of a new and much more promising theory. Thomson begins by lamenting the prevalence of the idea that there is an unbridgeable gap between fact and value--that to say something is good, for example, is not to state a fact, but to do something more like expressing an attitude or feeling. She sets out to challenge this view, first by assessing the apparently powerful claims of Consequentialism. Thomson makes the striking argument that this familiar theory must ultimately fail because its basic requirement--that people should act to bring about the "e;most good"e;--is meaningless. It rests on an incoherent conception of goodness, and supplies, not mistaken advice, but no advice at all. Thomson then outlines the theory that she thinks we should opt for instead. This theory says that no acts are, simply, good: an act can at most be good in one or another way--as, for example, good for Smith or for Jones. What we ought to do is, most importantly, to avoid injustice; and whether an act is unjust is a function both of the rights of those affected, including the agent, and of how good or bad the act is for them. The book, which originated in the Tanner lectures that Thomson delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 1999, includes two chapters by Thomson ("e;Goodness"e; and "e;Advice"e;), provocative comments by four prominent scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--and replies by Thomson to those comments.

Moral theory should be simple: the moral theorist attends to ordinary human action to explain what makes some acts right and others wrong, and we need no microscope to observe a human act. Yet no moral theory that is simple captures all of the morally relevant facts.

Thomson provides a systematic theory of human and social rights, elucidating what in general makes an attribution of a right true. This is a major effort to provide a stable foundation for the deeply held belief that we are not mere cogs in a communal machine, but are instead individuals whose private interests are entitled to respect.