Abstract

How compelling is radical normative pluralism, i.e. the view that contrary moral positions (deontological, consequentialist and so on) are all morally acceptable even in one given case? In ‘A Hostage Situation’ (2019), Saul Smilansky presents a thought experiment about moral decisions in life-and-death situations. According to Smilansky, the Hostage Situation (HS) reveals a rather puzzling and radical normative pluralistic picture, according to which even in life-and-death decisions, many moral choices that sometimes contradict each other are more or less equitable or at least morally acceptable simultaneously. He argues that there is a paradigmatic difference between HS and Trolley-Problem-type cases (TP); according to him, the decision in TP is always single-valued, so one cannot be pluralistic in a plausible way—that is, one cannot rationally accept both options at the same time. TP, he claims, has been a misleading paradigmatic example; the radically pluralistic result of HS may be a better paradigm for much of morality. I argue that Smilansky should have gone further, and that a proper understanding of HS and TP reveals that, far from being in conflict, both thought experiments support a radical normative pluralism. Thus, building upon Smilansky’s work but offering a very different position, I present in this paper a radical, novel interpretation of Trolley-Problem-type cases, which, if convincing, should significantly affect the way we think about normative moral theory.