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The Altruism Puzzle: The Obligation to Sacrifice One’s Life
Harry Brighouse
The obligation to sacrifice oneself in the scenario described by the puzzle
is stringent. Because this seems so obvious to me, it is hard to discern what
arguments will move the unconvinced. I offer an argument I find persuasive, and
consider some objections.
Let’s start with a variant of the altruism puzzle in which many people will
have the intuition that killing someone else is required. Imagine I am in a different
city from the one under threat. John, an innocent man beside me, has unknowingly
undergone a procedure that makes him the trigger of the bomb. The bomb in the
city under threat is set to detonate when John takes his 1,000th breath after 11 a.m.
He is currently taking his 980th breath. I have a gun, and can kill him instanta-
neously with it.
John is not at all implicated in the plot. He is a good person, gives joy to
others, and has a flourishing enjoyable life. The bombers subjected John to the
procedure while he was asleep. It left no traces. He is innocent of the plot and has
no reason to suspect anything.
But I have an obligation to sacrifice John’s life. Killing him, by stipulation, is
the only way of saving thousands of equally valuable lives. To deny the obligation
just seems to me not take seriously the scale of the destruction the bomb will
cause.
Killing him will certainly be very bad. It is bad that he loses his life, and bad
that I act in a way that contradicts my sense of who I really am (a pacific person
who does not take the lives of others)—undermines my integrity. Maybe I will
suffer severe emotional costs in the future as a result of my sense of responsibility
for having taken John’s life, despite understanding it was my duty. But these quite
real bads, and all others generated by the act, are massively outweighed by the
good of saving the thousands of other people.
So I am obliged to kill John. But what is the difference between killing him
and sacrificing myself? Just that, in general, we are obliged to be more cautious
about imposing costs on innocent others, especially serious costs like killing, than
on our innocent selves. We must be more parsimonious with the lives of others
than with our own. If I must kill John when that is the only way of preventing
detonation, then I must sacrifice myself when that is the only effective way.
Consider three objections. First, is it overdemanding for morality to require
such self-sacrifice? It is, certainly, demanding—sacrificing oneself is a consider-
able demand. But it is not something we cannot do: people do sacrifice themselves
JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 44 No. 2, Summer 2013, 115–117.
© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
116 Harry Brighouse
for others, and for principles, and the vast majority of us believe and hope that in
some circumstances we would be able to sacrifice ourselves. Maybe, on the
principle that ought implies can, those few who genuinely are incapable of
self-sacrifice are under no requirement. But for more of us, we can sacrifice our
lives. It may be more difficult when we understand there is some probability that
our sacrifice will be in vain. But the specifications of this case are clear in a way
that our actual choices rarely are: you know, for sure, that sacrificing yourself
really will save many thousands of lives.
The second retort is that someone who sacrifices her life for innocent others
commands our moral admiration in a way that suggests we think the act is
supererogatory, not merely dutiful. Certainly someone who sacrifices her life in
the scenario commands our admiration. But admiration can be commanded when
someone is merely fulfilling her duty. Most of us admire a parent who merely risks
her life to save her child from a burning building, even though that is her duty. The
altruism puzzle sacrifice commands admiration because we know a situation
requiring someone to sacrifice her life is rare, makes extreme demands on our
motivations, and is one for which few people are well-prepared. Admiration is
especially appropriate given that we have sufficient humility to be less than fully
confident that we would be dutiful ourselves in those circumstances.
The third objection is that I might have conflicting, preexisting, obligations.
I have friends, a spouse, and children, to all of whom I am tied in various ways and
whose well-being I should treat as more important than the well-being of strang-
ers. Let us suppose that they live far from the city under threat. In sacrificing
myself, I impose a large cost on them. Either this is permissible, or it is imper-
missible. If it is permissible, then the fact I am doing it is no objection to my
sacrificing myself being obligatory. If it is not permissible then, indeed, sacrificing
myself is not obligatory, but, contra the assumption in the description of the
puzzle, it is not even permissible.
So am I even permitted to impose the cost of my death on my near and dear?
I am certainly permitted to act in ways that risk imposing that same burden on
them—consider driving moderate distances, crossing the road at night, walking
downstairs while slightly tipsy. Someone who is killed in a car-crash for which he
is not responsible has not wronged his near and dear, even if the trip was frivolous.
Morality allows us to risk our lives, even for trivial benefits to ourselves. It is not
a great leap to think morality requires us to do something that certainly imposes
these costs for the sake of huge benefits to others.
The thought that we are permitted or even required to act partially toward our
near and dear is animated partly by the understanding that a world in which people
were always willing to forsake their nearest and dearest for the sake of somewhat
more needy strangers would be dreadful; many of the best things in life would be
lost. But a world in which people were always willing to give their lives for the
sake of thousands of strangers, if called upon, would not be dreadful. The near and
dear of the person who routinely forsakes them for merely somewhat needier
strangers could only conclude that he does not truly care for them. Those of the
The Altruism Puzzle 117
person who gives his life for thousands of others, when his life was the only one
that could fulfill that function, can, and should, understand that they are cared for
and loved, but that duties to others sometimes requires that we impose costs on
those we love.
Thanks to Gina Schouten and two anonymous referees for comments on a previous
draft.
