Judith Jarvis Thomson 1929 – 2020
Judith Jarvis Thomson was an American moral and metaphysical philosopher and a long-serving professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her A Defense of Abortion, published in 1971, became one of the most discussed papers in twentieth-century moral philosophy and inaugurated a new style of careful, scenario-driven argument in applied ethics. She also developed the trolley problem in its modern form, making it the central test case for theories of permissible harm. Her Realm of Rights articulated a comprehensive theory of moral rights, while late work returned to questions of action and metaphysics.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Judith Jarvis Thomson:
“A defense of abortion does not require a denial of personhood.”
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Attributed to Judith Jarvis Thomson:
“We have rights, but we also have duties to one another.”
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Attributed to Judith Jarvis Thomson:
“The trolley problem reveals the structure of our moral intuitions.”
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Attributed to Judith Jarvis Thomson:
“What you may not do is not always what you must not allow to happen.”
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Attributed to Judith Jarvis Thomson:
“Careful description of cases is the first task of moral philosophy.”