Foot on the Doctrine of Double Effect
Philippa Foot
Philippa Foot was a philosopher who taught for many years at Oxford and, later in her career, at UCLA. By most accounts she is one of a small handful of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century. Her writing is clever and stylish (in my view), but not in the straightforward contemporary way of the other writers that we have read: Singer, Marquis, and Thomson. She was born in 1920 and attended college during World War II, and so her writing style is a little bit more old-fashioned, she sometimes changes direction in the middle of long paragraphs, and it can be a little bit harder to follow. But if you stay disciplined and make yourself go back and re-read whenever you get lost, she has a lot of ideas, and her article is short, so it will not be hard to find time to read it slowly. I suggest that you plan to read it at least 2-3 times, and write down questions that you have in-between so that you can watch out for their answers when you re-read.
The Doctrine of Double Effect
Today's reading is an article by Foot called "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect." It is partly about abortion, but as you'll see, mostly about something called the Doctrine of Double Effect, which you can read more about here.
The Doctrine of Double Effect is typically credited to the medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, whose ideas were very influential in shaping Catholic theology. So it is an idea that is often associated, as Foot notes, with Catholicism, but there is nothing particularly Catholic about the idea. It is just an attempt to formulate a general principle about what sort of thing can affect what it permissible to do, when your actions bring about bad outcomes (for example, that someone or something - such as a fetus - dies).
Doctrine of Double Effect, what: There are some cases in which it is wrong to bring about a bad effect that you intend directly, but not wrong to bring it about as an expected consequence of something else that you directly intend.
As you read, pay special attention for what Foot finds attractive about the Doctrine of Double Effect, and to what she does not like about it. She uses a pair of examples that she thinks we should treat differently to illustrate one of these points. Which point is she illustrating with this pair of examples, and how?
Philippa Foot, by Renee Jorgenson Bolinger
The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing
In place of the Doctrine of Double Effect, Foot prefers an alternative moral principle, sometimes known as the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. Whereas the Doctrine of Double Effect says that the difference between direct and oblique intention is morally relevant, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing says that the difference between doing something and allowing it to be done is morally relevant:
Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, what: There are some cases in which it is wrong to do something bad but not wrong to allow a similar bad thing to happen.
Foot devotes much of the second part of the article to trying to explain why the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing can capture what was originally appealing about the Doctrine of Double Effect but without its faults. You won't be able to follow this well unless you already can keep track of what the appeal and faults were of the Doctrine of Double Effect.
