As for Kant, in the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals he distinguished between perfect duties and imperfect duties, and placed the perfect duties (mainly duties of “do not do”) above the imperfect duties. So as I understand it, he would indeed suggest not turning the switch, because that is a perfect negative duty, rather than saving others, which is an imperfect positive duty (I’d appreciate a correction if I misunderstood).

I really didn’t explain the argument properly. The doctrine of double effect (which comes to provide a justification for dilemmas of this kind) says that there is justification to perform immoral actions (in the sense of action rather than omission) if and only if the following conditions are met:
1. The act in itself is not morally forbidden (there is nothing bad about turning a switch)
2. The good result is foreseen and intended (we will save 5 people, and that is what we want)
3. The bad result is foreseen but unintended (we do not mean to kill the one person, but when we turn the switch that does indeed happen, unfortunately)
4. The good result is not achieved through the bad result (the killing of the person does not cause the saving of the five, unlike, for example, the doctor dilemma, where killing one serves to save the other five)
5. The benefit of the good result greatly outweighs the harm of the bad result (as I said, unlike the other clauses, this one is open to debate)
The claim is that by means of these arguments one can justify killing one person in order to save five, in the trolley problem.
What do you think about that? And also, I’d be glad if you’d give your opinion more generally about the trolley problem and what you claim it is moral to do in it.

This seems to me complete nonsense. Moving the switch is an act of killing. It is no different in any way from firing a gun or striking someone in a way that causes death. It is also permissible to fire a gun and to wave my hand. The fact that the other person put his face where I moved my hand is like moving the switch.
All this nonsense is both wrong and unnecessary. As a reasonable counterclaim, you could argue that a less bad outcome (one person dead instead of five) offsets the element of action versus omission. That is the usual claim of those who disagree. Notice that this is not pure consequentialism, since there is an offsetting between the result and the action.
As for me, I don’t have a clear position on the matter, but I tend toward inaction. Not because of the difference between action and omission, but because I have no right to arbitrarily choose a person to be killed when the objective circumstances are not threatening him. Those five—bad luck befell them, and I cannot save them. Harming another person whom I choose is an act that should not be done.

Thank you. Could you explain a bit more about the non-pure consequentialism? I didn’t understand the idea of offsetting between the result and the action.
And in addition, as someone who supports Kant’s moral theory and tries to conduct himself according to it, my more basic question in this whole discussion is: what justifies committing an immoral act? After all, I assume you’d agree with me that the trolley killing thousands of people as opposed to one person is a problem where it is much harder to say we should not turn the switch. Also, there are more realistic and difficult dilemmas. For example, should one kill the head of a terror organization, knowing with certainty that innocent people around him will die? (I assume that here too, intuitively, I tend to answer that he should be killed despite the death of the innocents, if his death is certain and if he really is the head of an organization that causes the deaths and suffering of many people.)
I have an intuition that there is some mechanism that is supposed to help us decide to violate a moral duty, and I don’t think the answer is utilitarian (in the example, killing the head of the organization will cause much less killing in the future, and therefore it is worthwhile to sacrifice the few for the many). Do you have any direction toward such a mechanism? I’d appreciate your brief answer on the matter and for you to point me to places that discuss it so I can expand on the topic.
So far (though admittedly I’m still young) I haven’t found a satisfactory answer to this issue, and I think it is an important topic to clarify.

I don’t accept your formulation. Nothing justifies performing an immoral act. The question is what the moral or immoral act is.
There are complex considerations, and their bottom line determines what the moral act is. In my remarks I said that both the action and the result carry weight, and sometimes they stand against one another. When you have to perform the active deed of moving the switch, that has negative weight. But opposite that stands the weight of saving many lives (five people) versus one. There is an offset here. I don’t know how to give you the exact function that would let you decide. When there are a thousand people, it sounds like something for which it is reasonable to move the switch.
Eliminating a terrorist at the cost of innocent lives is actually a somewhat easier question. See my article on this: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%94%D7%99%D7%91%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%95%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%98-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%9C-%D7%95%D7%93
and more.

Thank you, I read it.
(If you feel we’ve exhausted it, we can stop the discussion, though I’d still be glad to keep asking.)
I understand my mistake in formulating this as doing an immoral act versus a result, because if one blurs the distinction between action and omission, then of course not saving 1000 people is an immoral act.
What still doesn’t work for me is the moral formulation, the justification. When I think about saving the 1000, I can’t help but think about the bad result that would happen if I don’t turn the switch. I’m relying more on the result than on the categorical imperative, and that in itself is not moral.
Oh well, that’s on the psychological level. But would you agree to formulate the main claim as follows?: “Saving 1000 people is an act that ranks higher morally than not killing one person.”
And if we bring in another famous example, if one does not lie to the Nazi (who came to kill a Jew hiding in my house), that is an immoral act because of the lie, of course, but it would be more immoral not to save the Jew.
Would you agree to accept these reasonings, which still try to lean on the categorical imperative?
If you have other suggestions, I’d be glad to hear them. I want to be consistent in my answers, first of all to myself and also to others, when I come to justify my moral view. And I don’t want to base myself on utilitarianism, or at least not as a foundation, and yet I always return to utilitarian reasoning when I want to decide where duties conflict.

I’ll say again that the categorical imperative has nothing to do with the discussion in any way. It does not lead to the conclusion that one must not move the switch. What does this have to do with the categorical imperative? It may perhaps relate to deontology as opposed to teleology (and even that is not certain, because one can formulate a deontology that identifies action with omission). And about that I wrote that there is an offset between the deontological negative value of moving the switch and the positive value of the result (the gain of human lives). That is exactly the situation in lying to the Nazi and in the examples you gave. It is simply an offset between moral values, as in any conflict. This has not the slightest connection to the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative only provides the infrastructure for why one should behave morally, but in determining what the moral act is, its status is quite limited. I can formulate that in my view it is preferable that everyone act by moving the switch when it is possible to save more people—and there you have conformity with the categorical imperative.

Okay, I think I understand.
If so, then one can pour consequentialist content and reasoning into the categorical imperative—for example, to say that it is preferable to lie to a friend so that he will feel good (and here the general law would be that not harming another person is the value, even if that includes lying). I know many people who would accept that rule as a general rule, and I don’t think it is right. Assuming those people really believe in that value and aren’t just saying it to me, the road from here to subjectivism seems short to me. Even though there aren’t many moral disagreements, those subjective reasonings (even according to the categorical imperative) of different people lead to a denial of agreement on universal moral values, to the inability of people to agree on objective moral rules.
One can always claim that there is disagreement, but I don’t see how one can persuade someone that the values I believe in are the correct ones without slipping into paternalism (in the cognitive sense—that the person does not know or understand what he himself thinks and believes). What is the way out of that? Maybe one can simply assume that people will arrive at the same rules if we are all honest with ourselves, but again, that is an argument that personally convinces me less.

At first glance, the track has two edges, one on the right and one on the left. So you can divert the trolley toward Kant, and then everyone will be saved 🙂

With the blessing of “Take counsel,” Emmanuel Kaliningradsky

And it turns out that if, Heaven forbid, this question were to land on a person in actual practice—he would react instinctively, and tilt the trolley this way or that without much thought, and the result is not something that can be fully anticipated and planned in advance.

Regards, Tsin Har-Habarzel Eisenberg

With God’s help, 3 Elul 5782

A discussion on a similar subject took place regarding the disaster in Tyre, where there was serious concern that during the clearing of the path in order to rescue those trapped, some of the trapped people would thereby be killed. This was discussed in Techumin 4 by Rabbi Itamar Warhaftig, may he live long, and Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, of blessed memory.

Regards, Menashe Barkai Buch-Trager

With God’s help, 3 Elul 5782

And when a person invests himself in Torah and the service of God, and all his bones say that they are to become a chariot for the Divine Presence, then naturally his hands will be faithful to carry out the action desired from Above, and the will of God in his hands will succeed in turning the trolley this way or that.

Regards, Naaman Shealtiel Menuchin (gematria 1148)

Your expectations from an ethical system are too high. Indeed, one cannot really persuade. The categorical imperative has received quite a few critiques (some of them were discussed here on the site. You can search).

With God’s help, 4th of the portion “Judges and officers you shall appoint in all your gates,” 5782

To Haza"b (who signed with my nickname) — greetings,

I do not agree that someone who invests himself in Torah and the service of God can rely on his hands to do what is good in God’s eyes in a halakhic question of capital law. As I mentioned above, the halakhic decisors discussed this.

What does seem likely is that a practical man who works with heavy equipment sets aside times for Torah and participates in classes of outstanding Torah scholars in Talmud and Jewish law. In the course of his learning, he may be exposed to the halakhic discussion of the subject, and as a result clarify his rabbi’s position on the matter in advance.

Among non-Jews there is usually no connection between philosophers who deal academically with ethical questions and the workers driving trolley cars in mines who encounter such questions in reality. Academic “theory” and reality on the ground are as far from each other as heaven and earth.

By contrast, in the world of Torah scholars, it is common for an ordinary worker and a great Torah scholar to have a learning, halakhic, and daily connection with working people. Thus Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, who was among the greatest halakhic decisors, and whose words in Techumin I cited above, served as the rabbi of the farmers of Kfar HaRoeh and dealt with questions they brought him from the field, and questions of colliding trolleys were not “academic” in his place.

It is possible that the practical discussion regarding the building in Tyre that collapsed reached Rabbi Yisraeli in “real time” from his students who were serving in the army, and the question whether it is permissible to clear a path to the trapped people at the cost of harming some of them was practical.

Regards, Menashe Barkai Buch-Trager

Paragraph 3, line 1
Among non-Jews there is usually no connection…

With God’s help
4th of the portion “Justice, justice shall you pursue,”

To the impostor signed with the name Menashe Barkai Buch-Trager (Haza"b), who rejected my words regarding the drawing of the limbs to do the will of their Creator.

This principle is well known from books and authors, and especially from the books of Hasidism, which repeat it, for example:
Rabbi Chana of Kalashitz, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed, who was murdered for sanctifying God’s name, wrote in accordance with the words of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed [brought in Ilana Dechayei and in Agra DePirka, sec. 222], to explain the wording of the verse, “And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son,” that Abraham our father, due to his great holiness, grasped the whole Torah before it was given, and his holy limbs were drawn of themselves to make every movement only according to the will of God. Since in truth it was not God’s will that he stretch forth his hand to slaughter his son Isaac, then until he placed him on the altar it was all a matter of commandment and his limbs were drawn of themselves to act according to God’s will. But at the moment when he sought to take the knife to slaughter him, his holy body resisted this, for it is not God’s will that he use the knife, since he was only commanded to bring him up—“Bring him up, then bring him down.” Therefore Abraham our father had to perform an action against the will of his body, and forcefully stretched out his hand to take the knife.

From the foundation of these words we learn that sanctifying the body through labor in Torah and observance of the commandments brings a person to a state in which he himself will desire to fulfill the will of God.

With many blessings,
Itai Gurion Kimmelman-Langzam (gematria 1148)

With God’s help, 4 Elul 5782

To Haza"b — greetings,

On the contrary, from there there is a refutation, for even though Abraham felt that his body did not support his stretching out his hand to the knife, he acted against that feeling out of self-nullification before God’s command, whose plain meaning was to offer the sacrifice. Therefore he needed the explicit command, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad.” So his feeling in itself did not exempt him from carrying out the commandment according to its plain meaning. After all, Hasidism itself taught that “the mind rules over the heart.”

Regards, M.B.T.

Regards,

On the eve of Wednesday, of the portion “And you shall inquire and investigate well, and behold it is true, the matter is established,”

To Haza"b, greetings,

From there, specifically, there is proof—that as long as there is no command, a person who is clean of personal biases and desires should follow where his limbs are drawn to go. Only when there is an explicit command must he force his body to follow God’s command.

And something like this is explained in the name of the greatest of his brethren, Rabbi Tzadok, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed:
And Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed, wrote (Divrei Sofrim, sec. 1): “A person who is free of desires and self-interest certainly ought to feel, when he fulfills the upright commands of God, joy of heart, even though by this he loses money or the like, since the commandment requires it and the commandment of God is dearer than his wealth. And if he feels sorrow, that is a sign that it is not a commandment. This is what they said regarding the release of debts in the Sabbatical year (Gittin 37a, beginning of the amud): Rabbah said, ‘Hang him until he says to him,’ and afterwards it brings the incident that Rabbah was sad—see there. And it seems to me that from that incident he arrived at this halakhic ruling, that the commandment of release is only in saying ‘I release it,’ not in actual practice, and ‘hang him,’ etc., for the commandment is not actually to release, and therefore he was sad; otherwise he would not have been sad. And even though Rabbah considered himself an intermediate person, as stated in HaRoeh (Berakhot 61b), such that his heart had not yet become entirely void within him, nevertheless he knew within himself that he was prepared to heed the counsel of the good inclination and overcome the evil inclination to perform the commandments of God with joy and not be saddened by it if it truly were a commandment. And this matter applies only to the remnant whom God calls.”
From the upshot of these words we learn that one who has purified his soul can know what God’s will is by the joy and serenity of the heart, and when his heart is not drawn after the matter it may be that the command was not understood properly.

Regards,
Hasdai Betzalel Duvdevani Kirshen-Quass

With God’s help, 4 Elul 5782

Rabbi Yaron Ben-David, “Is it permissible to kill one person in order to save another?” (the Daf Yomi Portal, Pesachim 25b) brings (in source 16) the words of the Hazon Ish (Laws of the Sanhedrin, sec. 25):

“And one should consider the case of a person who sees an arrow about to kill many people, and he can divert it to another side where it will kill only one person who is at the other side, and those on this side will be saved. But if he does nothing, the many will be killed and the one will remain alive.

And it is possible that this is not similar to handing over one person to be killed, for there the handing over is a cruel act of killing a person, and in that action there is no saving of the many in the natural character of the action, but only incidentally it now causes salvation for others. Also, the saving of the others is connected with handing over a Jewish life to be killed.

But diverting the arrow to another side is essentially an act of rescue, and is not connected at all to the killing of the individual on the other side; it only happens that now, incidentally, there is a Jewish person on the other side. And since on this side many lives will be lost, and on that side only one—it is possible that we should minimize Jewish loss in every way possible.”

In the discussion in Techumin 4 on rescuing trapped people while trampling some of them, the words of the Hazon Ish were discussed, and Rabbi Ben-David summarizes as follows:

“There were those who understood from the words of the Hazon Ish (Rabbi Uri Dasberg, Techumin 4) that he would permit carrying out a search-and-rescue operation even if it involved trampling the few who were on the upper floors, because in defining the action, what we are doing is a rescue action—even though it will cause death to those beneath the bulldozer.

But Rabbi Yisraeli himself argues that there is a difference between an arrow, whose diversion is only an indirect causation of killing, because its force already exists, and trampling with a bulldozer, which is an action done by the force of a human being.”

It is possible that the reasoning of the Hazon Ish is close to the claim of “double effect,” since the main intention of the person diverting is to save the many, and the harm to the few is a “foreseen but unintended result,” coming only incidentally.

Regards, Menashe Barkai Buch-Trager

A collection of additional halakhic material on these issues appears in Rabbi Netanel Laub’s article from the Shmuel Institute, “Saving a Life by Taking a Life.” There is a link to it on the Wikipedia entry “Trolley problem.” Additional material and comparisons to the positions of other cultures appear in Ariel Aviv’s article, “Whose blood is redder? Life versus life.”

On the Hannibal Directive in Jewish law—Rabbi Eliezer Goldstein’s article in Techumin 31 and Rabbi Yaakov Epstein’s response, responsa Hevel Nachalato, 16:54 (and there too Rabbi Yaakov Ariel’s response). On the Entebbe operation in Jewish law—Rabbi Michael Yemer’s lecture on the “Torat Beit Shemesh” site and Rabbi Aviad Tavory’s lecture on the “Torat Har Etzion” site. “Give to the wise, and he will become wiser still.”

Regards, M.B.T.