Starbuck’s Train and Melville’s Trolley: “The Musket” as Thought Problem in Moby-Dick

• Published in: CEA critic Vol. 82; no. 1; pp. 8 - 22
• Main Author: Elliott, Brian P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.03.2020
• Subjects: American literature; Ethics; Foot; Judgment; Melville, Herman (1819-1891); Morality; Philosophers; Philosophy
• ISSN: 0007-8069; 2327-5898; 2327-5898
• DOI: 10.1353/cea.2020.0006

If so, our narrator may be judging the first mate too harshly, especially given the inquiries of the branch of modern applied philosophy known as trolleyology, so named after its most famous thought experiment, the “trolley problem.” Since its introduction in 1967 by British philosopher Philippa Foot, the trolley problem has often been used to test human moral and ethical nature. While there are many variations on the basic premise, each trolley problem essentially poses a question of the moral correctness of actions that positively benefit multiple people while harming one or a few. [...]Melville’s trolley problem—Starbuck’s dilemma in “The Musket”—involves some interesting complications, including access to Starbuck’s thoughts, that provide a fascinating twist to the basic problem’s premise and make the mate’s decision (and Ishmael’s judgment of it) one worth examining in closer detail. Melville’s Wisdom, “Sidling Philosophical Methodology,” and the Thought Problem Approach In the introduction to their recent edited collection Melville among the Philosophers, Corey McCall and Tom Nurmi remind us that “For more than a century and a half, readers have found Melville’s writing rich with philosophical ideas,” a fittingly retrospective statement as we approach the 200th anniversary of his birth (viii).