Unplugging The Violinist Summary

In this paper, I will be concerned with critiquing Thomas Beckwith’s response to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”. Specifically, I will be considering how Beckwith’s application of Thomson’s argument in “Unplugging the Violinist” is not an accurate representation of the arguments that Thomson puts forward. In the first section, I propose that Beckwith’s thought experiment, which he uses to illustrate the deficiencies of Thomson thesis, challenges choice, rather than consent, the latter which I argue is the crux of Thomson’s argument. As well, I will also argue that Thomson’s articulation of a moral obligation does not necessarily preclude involuntary obligations.
Beckwith claims that there are six ethical quandaries in Thomson’s
In his essay, the author argues that the implication of Thomson’s violinist thought experiment is the conclusion that moral obligations need must voluntary to have moral force, specifically within the familial context. However, I believe that this is a misreading of Thomson’s argument. Instead, Thomson is arguing that moral obligations must be consented to in order to have moral force. Such a distinction may appear miniscule but it is key. In the thought experiment of the violinist that Beckwith cites, it is consent, not volunteering, that is the primary issue. Moreover, she does not, as Thomson claims use it as a paradigm for all relationships but is meant to serve as an analogy for pregnancy. Thus, his subsequent claim that Thomson argues that all moral obligations must be voluntary accepted, is predicated on an application that is beyond the scope of Thomson’s paper. The issue with applying Thomson’s argument broadly, is that one could effectively argue that fathers should be able to consent the responsibilities of fatherhood, and by extension, should have a right in deciding if a woman can get an abortion, which is what Beckwith is implying with his child support argument. Such a conclusion, however, directly undermines the autonomy that Thomson is arguing