In May 1884, the British yacht Mignonette set sail for Sydney, Australia with four crew on board.

On July 5, disaster struck, the yacht was lost, and the crew were forced to take to a small lifeboat. For eighteen days, they drifted around the ocean more than 1000 miles from land. By this point, things were desperate: they had been without food for seven days and water for five. All crew members were in a bad way, but worst off was 17 year old cabin boy, Richard Parker. He was barely conscious, if indeed he was conscious at all. At this point, the captain of the ship, Tom Dudley, suggested they ought to draw lots to select one of them to be killed, thereby giving the others a chance of survival. The thought was they could use the body of the dead person as a source of food and liquid. This idea was in the first instance rejected by one of the crew members, Edmund Brooks, but Dudley didn't let the issue drop, and later the same day discussed the matter with Edwin Stephens, the fourth member of the crew. He pointed out that it was overwhelmingly likely that Richard Parker, the cabin boy, was going to die whatever happened, but if they killed him - which was the best way of ensuring his blood would be in a fit state to drink - there was a chance that he and Stephens would see their wives and families again. The following day, with no prospect of rescue, Dudley, with the assent of Stephens, killed the boy. The three remaining crew members then fed on his body, enabling them to survive long enough to be rescued on July 29th. Dudley later described the scene as follows: "I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal we all was like mad wolfs who should get the most and for men fathers of children to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason." The facts in this case are well-established. Richard Parker was killed by Tom Dudley, with the consent of Edwin Stephens, because they genuinely believed there was no immediate prospect of rescue, that Parker would likely die regardless of what happened, and that all of them would die if he was not sacrificed. The question is, were they morally justified in killing him? The Warsaw Ghetto Doctor In the late summer of 1942, 22 year old Adina Blady Szwajger was working as a doctor at Warsaw's Children's Hospital. It was no ordinary summer, though. Some 18 mnonths earlier, the Nazi occupiers of Poland had shut the gates on Warsaw's Jewish population creating what is now known as the Warsaw ghetto. As a result, Szwajger had for at least a year worked in conditions of almost unimaginable suffering as the hospital filled with children dying of starvation and tuberculosis. In her memoir, she talks of "famished skeletons" lapping up the slops of a spilled soup pot from the floor; and of the attempt to live a "principled life" in circumstances of the utmost moral depravity. But in August 1942, it became impossible to go on. The Germans had begun to round up the Jewish population, loading them into cattle trucks and shipping them off to the death camps, where their fate was to meet a grisly end. By this point, the hospital was no longer functioning as a hospital - there were "no children's wards, just the sick, the wounded and the dying everywhere." The moment which came to define Szwajger's life arrived when the Nazis turned up at the hospital, and began the brutal process of shutting it down. A nurse begged Szwajger to end her elderly mother's life: "Doctor...I can't do it. I beg you, please. I don't want them to shoot her in bed, and she can't walk." Dr. Szwajger administered morphine, first attending to "families of staff." Then she went to the ward which housed the smallest infants, and one by one gave each child a lethal dose. "Just as, during those two years of real work in the hospital, I had bent down over the little beds, so now I poured this last medicine into those tiny mouths...And downstairs, there was screaming because the...Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks." She told the older children "that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear...So they lay down and after a few minutes - I don't know how many - but the next time I went into that room, they were asleep." Adina Szwajger took the lives of her young patients as the final act of what she saw as her duty of care, in order to spare them ignominious and certain death at the hands of the Nazis. But, of course, the infants and children did not and could not have consented. The issue, then, is whether she did the right thing. Was she morally justified in taking the lives of her patients in order to save them from their fate at the hands of the Nazis? Scenario 3: The Surgeon's Dilemma You are very ill in hospital. The situation is desperate. Barring something akin to a miracle, you're going to die. It isn't quite clear when, but you'll be extremely lucky to last out the week. A transplant surgeon comes to you and explains that she's in a fix. She needs your heart, liver and kidneys for three patients, right away. She explains that the four of you have the same very rare blood type, and that while it is

possible they'll survive without your organs, it is by orders of magnitude more likely that they'll all be dead within the next week or so if they don't receive them. She also tells you that one of the patients is her daughter, and that she's desperate to save her daughter's life. You listen with sympathy, but you don't want to give up the fight for life just yet. You realise you have virtually no chance of suriviving beyond the next week, but while there's any chance at all, you want to cling to life. So you tell her "No". Unfortunately for you, she doesn't listen. You don't know much about it, but she gives you a fatal dose of morphine, and then wheels your body off to surgery and extracts your organs. The transplants work well, and as a result of your death, her three patients get to live out their lives. The facts of this case are clear. You were killed by the surgeon because she believed you were going to die anyway, that she could save the lives of her three patients, one of whom was her daughter, by using your organs, and that without the transplant taking place immediately, it was overwhelmingly likely that all of you would die. The question is was she morally justified in killing you? Question 1: Torture, as a matter of principle, is always morally wrong. Question 2: The morality of an action is determined by whether, compared to the other available options, it maximises the sum total of happiness of all the people affected by it. Question 3: It is always, and everywhere, wrong to cause another person's death - assuming they wish to stay alive if this outcome is avoidable. Question 4: If you can save the lives of innocent people without reducing the sum total of human happiness, and without putting your own life at risk, you are morally obliged to do so. The Runaway Train The brakes of the train that Casey Jones is driving have just failed. There are five people on the track ahead of the train. There is no way that they can get off the track before the train hits them. The track has a siding leading off to the right, and Casey can hit a button to direct the train onto it. Unfortunately, there is one person stuck on the siding. Casey can turn the train, killing one person; or he can allow the train to continue onwards, killing five people. Should he turn the train (1 dead); or should he allow it to keep going (5 dead)? Marty Bakerman is on a footbrige above the train tracks. He can see that the train approaching the bridge is out of control, and that it is going to hit five people who are stuck on the track just past the bridge. The only way to stop the train is to drop a heavy weight into its path. The only available heavy enough weight is a (very) fat man, who is also watching the train from the footbridge. Marty can push the fat man onto the track into the path of the train, which will kill him but save the five people already on the track; or he can allow the train to continue on its way, which will mean that the five will die. Should he push the fat man onto the track (1 dead); or allow the train to continue (5 dead)? Marty Bakerman knows with absolute certainty that the fat man on the bridge is responsible for the failure the train's brakes: upset by train fare increases, he sabotaged the brakes with the intention of causing an accident. As before, the only way to stop the train and save the lives of the five people already on the track is to push the fat saboteur off the bridge into the path of the train. Should Marty push the fat saboteur onto the track (1 dead); or allow the train to continue (5 dead)? Should You Torture the Fat Man? The fat man, having avoided being thrown in front of the runaway train, has been arrested, and is now in police custody. He states that he has hidden a nuclear device in a major urban centre, which has been primed to explode in 24 hours time. The following things are true: 1. The bomb will explode in 24 hours time. 2. It will kill a million people if it explodes. 3. If bomb disposal experts get to the bomb before it explodes, theres a chance it could be defused. 4. The fat man cannot be tricked into revealing the location of the bomb, nor is it possible to appeal to his better nature, nor is it possible to persuade him that he was wrong to plant the bomb in the first place. 5. If the fat man is tortured, then it is estimated there is a 75% chance that he will give up the bombs location.

6. If the fat man does not reveal the location, the bomb will explode, and a million people will die: there is no other way of finding out where the bomb is located. Should the fat man be tortured in the hope that he will reveal the location of the nuclear device? Do you agree with the following?: *There is a social hierarchy of aesthetic tastes, where certain tastes are privileged and others are dominated (e.g. classical music is privileged over pop music; certain styles of dress are privileged over others.) *An individual's aesthetic tastes and dispositions are largely determined by class and social origin, because of the significant role of childhood experiences, family life and home surroundings (habitus). *Possession of a privileged aesthetic disposition constitutes a form of cultural capital (like a form of "wealth"). *Society rewards and penalizes people based on their possession of cultural capital (i.e. whether they have the right taste, disposition, outlook, etc.) *After childhood, an aesthetic disposition can only be "learnt" to a limited extent. A person who grew up in the environment of the privileged culture is distinguishable, and considered superior, to s/he who attempts to acquire it later in life. *Society denies and suppresses the role of socio-economic privilege (or lack thereof) in the formation of tastes. There is a prevailing myth that good taste is an "innate" quality that some people are just "born with". *Therefore, the hierarchy of what is viewed as natural taste perpetuates class hierchies. *There is actually nothing about "high culture" that makes it objectively better than "low culture". However, the former is claimed by privileged elites to be inherently superior. *The elite perpetuates the myth that some people just have better taste than others. *This hierarchy of aesthetics applies not only to fine arts but to all spheres of life (dress sense, home decoration, conversational style, vocabulary, style of physical movement, general knowledge, interests.) *The middle classes are nervous and defensive of their social status. They are terrified of being judged as having insufficient amounts of cultural capital. They look up to higher classes for indications of what tastes they ought to have (e.g. trying to like classical music; trying to appreciate abstract art.) *Think, for example, of the judgmentalism that often abounds when people discuss musical tastes. *"Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes." (Bourdieu) http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-is-communism.html http://www.buzzle.com/articles/philosophy-topics/
Communism just advocates a better life for the working people. Yes it has been corrupted by power hungry politicians. I think it would have had a better chance if there was a constitutional mechanism in place in communist countries that allow for eisier ejection of corrupt power hungry politicians.