You might have a look at this famous thought experiment:
- https://ethics.org.au/thought-experiment-the-famous-violinist/
- https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2021/05/09/the-unconscious-violinist-50-years-on/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265091
- https://philarchive.org/archive/WOOPAP-7
You can go back to the example of Covid19 and find countless cases when doctors had to make a sound decision to save a life and risk another. The general rule was to save the youngest and sacrifice the eldest when there was an ethical dilemma of who to save first. I think that this decision was mostly utilitarian as it sought to protect the right to life of those who would bring more pleasurable consequences to the world (in terms of productivity) than the elderly. It was not deontological because the categorical imperative of justice would suggest that all lives needed to be saved equally. Also, it was not virtue-based because virtue ethics cannot imagine solutions to such ethical dilemmas. Finally, other criteria might have changed the parameters of whose life to save. Take the example of an elderly person who is your father or a Nobel prize winner; could the doctors sacrifice him for a younger delinquent person? I congratulate you on this interesting question though.
Thanks for your reply, Abdelhafid Jabri. Why do you think that "virtue ethics cannot imagine solutions to such ethical dilemmas"? Helping someone and fulfilling a duty, for instance, can create a dilemma where we must make a choice. Or there can be conflict when resisting an unjust act or benefiting something. Do you now any particular source about your point?
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