Tying the classic political theory with modern-day examples, Harvard University professor of government Michael Sandel enlightened University students Wednesday night at a special lecture about justice and politics.
At “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” held in the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus, Sandel spoke to a packed house, which erupted in discussion and laughter throughout the evening as they participated in the discussion.
He introduced the discussion with Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian theory of justice.
“The just thing to do is whatever will maximize the general welfare,” he said.
Sandel illustrated this idea with a hypothetical situation, asking the audience to imagine being the driver of a trolley car with broken brakes traveling at 60 miles per hour toward five workers working on the track. If the trolley crashes into the workers, all would die.
But there is an option, he said.
“So you are on the brink of despair, then you notice that there is a side track, and on that track, there is one worker. So you can turn the trolley car and turn on the side track, killing the one but sparing the five,” Sandel said. “What would you do?”
Most said they would turn, but a handful would not.
Sandel then changed the situation, asking the audience to imagine being an onlooker standing on a bridge, watching the same scene.
“You feel helpless as you see the trolley about to crash into the five, until you notice that standing next to you on the bridge is a very heavy man,” Sandel said. “You could push him over the bridge onto the track, into the way of the trolley.”
Doing this, the trolley would be stopped and the workers would be saved, but the heavy man would die, he said.
“Who would push?” Sandel said.
Most people said they would not push the heavy man, showing how a slight change in circumstance could cause people to consider a different consequence to yield the least harm.
Sandel applied this theory to the subject of torture, used by many governments to fulfill a goal.
“According to [former Vice President] Dick Cheney, it may be inflicting terrible suffering if you waterboard or torture a terrorist suspect, but he claims that we might get very valuable information that saves thousands of lives,” Sandel said.
He asked the audience if in that situation, torture was reasonable. The audience was split on the question, raising another point.
“Maximizing happiness is not the only thing that matters, morally speaking,” Sandel said. “What also matters — and what may matter more — is respecting certain fundamental human rights.”
There are certain categorical duties and rights that morality requires us to respect even if it means sacrificing some amount of happiness or utility — even if it means losing a certain number of lives, he said.
Sandel used several examples throughout the remainder of the discussion to illustrate Bentham’s utilitarianism and the idea of fundamental human rights regardless of utility.
He gave one example of a cost-benefit analysis tobacco company Philip Morris commissioned in the Czech Republic.
The analysis determined it would be more beneficial fiscally to the Czech Republic’s budget if they did not tax cigarettes and allowed elderly people to die prematurely from the effects of smoking, Sandel said.
Another story he gave was of his time at Oxford University in England when it was sexually segregated.
Oxford had decided to reverse a policy prohibiting men from sleeping with women in the dormitories, Sandel said. The University resolved that each woman may have a man stay over up to three nights per week, as she pays the university 50 pence per night to defray the cost of increased bathing and mattress cleaning.
Most students appreciated Sandel’s use of classical political thinkers with modern examples and his interaction with the audience during his lecture.
Rutgers College senior Andrew Hurowitz said he liked the discussion and thought Sandel was very engaging.
“He has a great ability to relay these ancient philosophical traditions to modern times, using torture and the speed limit,” he said. “Most people never thought we could never learn from Aristotle and Socrates about these issues, but we can.”
School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Bansri Bhatt is taking “Nature of Politics” this semester and saw many similarities in the subject matter.
“It was an experience to see what this professor thought and how he had a discussion, more so than a lecture,” Bhatt said. “I thought that was very appealing to me, because I’ve attended many lectures where substantively it was amazing but I’ve fallen asleep. All in all, [Sandel’s lecture] was entertaining.”
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