After the philosophy program was cut, junior Harry Richter decided to do an independent study on the ethics of violence, by focusing on the philosophy of self-defense, war, and civil disobedience.

“I was inspired to learn about my topic around the time of a lot of violent protests like the one at UC Berkeley, and when people were talking about potential violence in Lexington against the Sons of Confederate Veterans,” said Richter. “Then I started thinking about the events and whether they were wrong.”

Throughout the semester, Richter spent 90 hours in and out of school learning about his subject. So far, his favorite aspect of his studies is self-defense.

“Self-defense has probably been my favorite because it seems very simple, but involves lots of complex variables, such as, proportionality and likelihood of success,” said Richter.

So far, Richter has enjoyed the ethical trolley problem more than other self-defense topics.

“The trolley problem is an ethical hypothetical scenario in which there is a train heading towards five people and it will kill them if it hits them, but you can switch the train to go down a different track that would kill one person instead,” said Richter. “So people try to decide whether it’s okay to kill one person to save five people, or if you should just let five people die so you don’t murder one person.”

Richter plans on continuing his studies into the second semester, where he concludes his research on ethics of war.

“Once I finish my research, I am looking forward to putting it all together into my own theories about violence,” said Richter. “Having a full understanding of all aspects of violence will be interesting.”