Fulfilling requests

One of the most moving stories in Rosenbaum’s deeply moving Holocaust and the Halakhah tells of how one can be a great moral hero even when acting out of mistaken conscience. A man in a concentration camp comes to his rabbi with a problem. His son has been scheduled to be executed. But it is possible to bribe the kapo to get him off the death list. However, the kapo have a quota to fill, and if they let off his son, they will kill another child. Is it permissible to bribe the kapo knowing that this will result in the death of another child? The rabbi answers that, of course, it is permissible. The man goes away, but he is not convinced. He does not bribe the kapo. Instead, he concludes that God has called him to the great sacrifice of not shifting his son’s death onto another. The father finds a joy in the sacrifice amidst his mourning.

The rabbi was certainly right. The father’s conscience presumably was mistaken (unless God specifically spoke to him and required the sacrifice). Yet the father is a moral hero in acting from this mistaken conscience. (Here are two relevant features of this case. First, while he was mistaken, he was not mistaken in a way that shows moral callousness—on the contrary, he is obviously a man of moral sensitivity. Second, while he was mistaken in thinking the sacrifice was morally required, nonetheless the sacrifice was—I think—at least permissible.)

The analytic philosopher will see this as a variant of a trolley case (with some complications, such as that the deaths were mediated by the free agency of the kapo). It is permissible to redirect the trolley away from one’s child and towards a stranger’s child. This is another way in which the proportionality condition in the Principle of Double Effect is not a utilitarian calculation: the agent has a proportional reason to save their own child even when it is foreseen (but not intended) to cost another’s their life.

But at the same time it would not be permissible to redirect the trolley away from one stranger’s child towards another stranger’s child. Such redirection would be a grotesque toying with lives. It would be a needless and callous making of oneself into a cause of another’s death, even if unintentionally.

Here, however, is a case that puzzles me. Suppose Alice’s child is on the track the trolley is speeding towards, and a stranger’s child is on another track. Alice is physically incapable of redirecting the trolley but Bob is capable of it. Alice and both children are strangers to Bob. Would it be permissible for Alice to ask Bob to redirect the trolley?

Here is an argument to the contrary. It is impermissible for Bob to redirect the trolley from one stranger to another: that is just playing with lives. But it is impermissible to request someone to perform an impermissible action. Hence, it is impermissible to ask Bob to redirect the trolley.

That seems mistaken. The case of asking Bob to redirect the trolley need not be that different from begging the kapo to take one’s child off the death list, depending on the details of the latter story. So what is going on?

I think there are at least two ways to justify Bob’s acquiescence to the request and hence Alice’s making of the request:

1. Once Alice asks Bob to redirect the trolley, Alice is no longer a stranger to Bob. There is a way in which Bob in receiving her request can become an agent of Alice’s, and hence those that Alice cares for become ones that he has a special reason to care for.

2. On receipt of the request, Bob has two options coming with distinctive incommensurable reasons. The first is not to redirected, with the reason being promote equality, in this case equality between children who don’t have a parent in place to speak up for them and ones who do. The second is to fulfill the request of an anguished parent to save their child. Both reasons are grave, and it is permissible for him (other things being equal) to act on either reason. Requests really do add weight to reasons.

There is another complicating factor. I do have the intuition that if Bob is an employee in charge of the trolley, he should do nothing. The reason is this. Insofar as he is in charge of the trolley, Bob has a role duty of mitigating damage done by the trolley. It is generally good policy that such a role come along with a significant independence from outside influences, such as bribes or even requests. So, in that case, Bob should act as if he did not receive the request. But if he did not receive any request, he shouldn’t do anything, for it is better not to become the cause of the child’s death—as one would if one redirected.

Here is a variant case. There are three tracks. The trolley is on track A with five people. The other two tracks, B and C, have one person each, and Alice is asking Bob not to redirect to track B, as her child is there. Bob has to redirect to either track B or C, but everything other than Alice’s request is equal between these tracks. Here it seems to me that Bob should flip a coin (if there is time; if not, just act as randomly as he can) if he is an employee. And if he is not an employee, then he has a choice to accede to Alice’s request or flip a coin.