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majority of Germans believed the threat was a reasonable means of potentially saving a life. When, in court, Gäfgen’s lawyer attempted to use the torture threat to have the case dismissed, spectators were heard to grumble, “Incredible: How many rights does he want for this guy?” 3 And amidst the uproar from human rights groups, Daschner commented, “Not one single person has been able to tell me what I should have done.” 4
    No-harm Zone
     
    There could be no trolleyology without deontology.
    Deontology states that there are certain things, like torture, that you just shouldn’t do. We mustn’t take an entirely impersonal perspective on morality. An individual’s well-being shouldn’t just be stirred and dissolved into some giant vat of well-being soup. We can’t torture someone to death even if this would save five lives—even if it would, in the utilitarian sense, contribute to the total sum of happiness. Some deontologistsare absolutists—for them, nothing could ever justify torture. But most accept that in certain circumstances deontological constraints can be overridden, for example if the future of the planet is at stake.
    Central to the history of deontology was an eighteenth-century professor, the guru of Königsberg (a city then in East Prussia, now a Russian enclave renamed Kaliningrad), Immanuel Kant. Kant made major contributions in numerous areas of philosophy, not just ethics. He is among the greatest metaphysicians of all time—preoccupied with the limits of what we can know and understand about reality.
    Given his significance one might expect library shelves to groan under weighty biographies of his life. In fact there are few such tomes, explained by the fact that Kant lived an exceptionally regular and uneventful life. He attended the University of Königsberg and later taught there. There is virtually no account of his life in Königsberg that doesn’t include the possibly apocryphal story that the citizens of the city used to set their watches by his movements—he would take a daily walk at 4:30 p.m. and go up and down the street eight times. The one time he was late (another possibly apocryphal story has it) was when he received a copy of Rousseau’s tract on education, Émile , and was so enthralled and absorbed by it that he lost all track of time.
    In Kant’s view, persons must never be treated merely as a means to some other end. This was expressed most clearly in one formulation (there are several) of his “Categorical Imperative.” The Categorical Imperative is an absolute moral requirement for all times, all situations, all circumstances, and from which all other duties and obligations follow. Kant believed the Categorical Imperative could be derived through the exerciseof our reason alone. The relevant version of his Categorical Imperative—the second formulation—asserts that we should always treat others “never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
    It’s a simple idea to state, though it’s hard to work out what it entails in particular cases, both real and imaginary. However, its influence has been pervasive: the modern human rights movement is almost inconceivable without Kant. (In surely its most ironic use, the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for organizing the mass deportation of Jews to the concentration camps, justified himself during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961 by citing Kant’s Categorical Imperative.) 5
    One of those who has tried to set out in more detail what it means for humans to be enveloped in a moral carapace, a protective shield that is both sacred and inviolable, is Philippa Foot.
The existence of a morality which refuses to sanction the automatic sacrifice of the one for the good of the many … secures to each individual a kind of moral space, a space which others are not allowed to invade. Nor is it impossible to see the rationale of the principle that one man should not want evil,