more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
There is often a big discrepancy between what a society will spend on saving the life of a known person in peril, and what it will spend to reduce the future level of fatal accidents.
Gist of Idea
Societies spend a lot to save known persons, but very little to reduce fatal accidents
Source
Jonathan Glover (Causing Death and Saving Lives [1977], §16.3)
Book Ref
Glover,Jonathan: 'Causing Death and Saving Lives' [Penguin 1982], p.210
A Reaction
This is a good point in favour of utilitarian approaches, which ask for impersonal calculation (which presumably embody an ideal of justice, buried somewhere in utilitarianism). But it isn't just 'sentimentality'.
| 7907 | Human killing is worse if the victim is virtuous [Buddhaghosa] |
| 6832 | Killing a human, except as just punishment, is like killing all mankind [Mohammed] |
| 6825 | Do not kill except for a just cause [Mohammed] |
| 4649 | If someone's life is 'worth living', that gives one direct reason not to kill him [Glover] |
| 4651 | Utilitarians object to killing directly (pain, and lost happiness), and to side-effects (loss to others, and precedents) [Glover] |
| 4671 | What is wrong with killing someone, if another equally worthwhile life is substituted? [Glover] |
| 4676 | The 'no trade-off' position: killing is only justified if it prevents other deaths [Glover] |
| 4685 | Societies spend a lot to save known persons, but very little to reduce fatal accidents [Glover] |
| 7338 | Man's life is sacred, because it is made in God's image [Johnson,P] |