Ethical dilemmas are philosophy’s equivalent of trying to run a 100 metres race in sand with hurdles–the hurdles representing moral philosophies. Except every time you think you’ve finished the race perfectly, the ref disqualifies you for knocking down a few hurdles along the way.
From the classic trolley problem to the existential horrors of deciding whether you should tell your friend their haircut is awful. Ethical dilemmas shape our moral universe, influencing our decisions and relationships. More importantly, is there such a thing as solving these dilemmas without violating any moral ethics? (Probably not, but let’s try anyway.)
The Perfect Ethical Dilemma
A perfect ethical dilemma must have these three things:
NO Obvious Answer – If someone solves a dilemma in under five minutes, you just skipped an entire Ethics class.
Conflicting Moral Principles – A dilemma is supposed to make you existentially spiral and question how you lead your life.
Create a Compelling Scenario – Everybody loves a story. Should you choose between your loved one or the whole world exploding?
Common Ethical Dilemmas
Students of philosophy and armchair ethicists continue to ponder and debate these questions as if their lives depend on it. (Which it kind of does, good luck applying that degree in Philosophy to a job market.)
The Trolley Problem: Would you kill one person to save five?
Truth versus Loyalty: Do you keep a friend’s harmful secret or tell the truth?
Individual versus Community: You discover a health hazard at your workplace that could hurt the community, but exposing it could lead to job loss. Would you keep your job or go through financial instability?
Virtue versus Justice: When deciding to punish someone for a crime or to advocate for their rehabilitation, do you forgive or hold them accountable?
Solving the “Unsolvable” (Or pretending to)
The beauty of these unsolvable problems is that they resist easy solutions, so you have to get creative. But that doesn’t mean people won’t try. Depending on which philosophy you follow, you’ll arrive at wildly different conclusions for the dilemmas I listed above. If we’re using the Trolley Problem:
Utilitarianism: Use their free discount (lever) and pay the price of five for one.
Virtue Ethics: “What would a virtuous person do?” Too busy pondering = five people pancakes.
Existentialism: There’s no definite answer for this philosophy. You can pull the lever, not pull the lever, or join the people on the track if you want.
Machiavellianism: They would definitely pull the lever.
Deontology: I’m just here to watch.
The funniest part, though? No matter how you approach these dilemmas with any philosophy, somebody from a different standpoint will always tell you, you did wrong.
Ethical Dilemmas Are Unsolvable (But that’s the point)
These ethical dilemmas do not exist to be solved, but to make people argue and debate till they decide to switch to political science. Dilemmas remind us that not everything is black and white, and morality isn’t a neat question. It can be chaotic, frustrating, and it reminds us that we’re just humans trying to do what we think is right.
So the next time someone throws a zany or wacky hypothetical at you, don’t stress about the “right” answer. Instead, do what a good philosopher does: ask more questions till they forget what the original problem was.
