The Trolley Problem / Das Trolley-Problem

An inconspicuous essay titled "The Trolley Problem" from 1985 continues to engage us today: Suppose a person must decide whether to let a trolley go straight, resulting in the death of five track workers, or to divert it onto another worker. Which decision would be permissible, and why? This question points to fundamental ethical issues that gain new relevance in the age of machine ethics – for instance, in autonomous driving. Even in times of a pandemic, when medical resources become scarce and not all patients can be treated, or when terrorists hijack passenger planes and shooting them down becomes a possibility, these problems become pressing. The series "Great Papers in Philosophy" offers groundbreaking essays in philosophy: - A verbatim, citable reproduction of the text (the original foreign language text on the left, a new translation on the right). - A historical context in philosophy: How did people think about the problem in the past? What change did the essay bring about? How do we think about it today? - An analysis of the text or a reconstruction of its argumentative structure, followed by a section about the author and a commented bibliography.