To register for the 2015 course, visit https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0.

PART ONE: THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER
If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, knowing that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing, what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? It is with this hypothetical scenario that Professor Michael Sandel begins his course on moral reasoning. After the majority of students vote to kill the one person to save the lives of five others, Sandel presents three similar moral conundrums—each artfully designed to make the decision more difficult. As students stand up to defend their conflicting choices, it becomes clear that the assumptions underlying our moral reasoning are often contradictory, and the question of what is right and what is wrong is not always black and white.

PART TWO: THE ARGUMENT FOR CANNIBALISM

Sandel introduces the principles of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham through a famous 19th-century legal case involving a shipwrecked crew of four. After nineteen days at sea, the captain decides to kill the weakest among them, the young cabin boy, so that the others can feed on his blood and body and survive. The case sparks a class discussion about the moral validity of utilitarianism—and its doctrine that the right thing to do is that which produces "the greatest good for the greatest number."

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