The problem of the collision of lives from the standpoint of philosophical reflection

The Object of the Study is situations of collision of lives, in which the realization of the right to life of one person collides with the realization of a similar right of another; these are situations where the right to life of one person (group of people) can be secured only by taking this right from another person (other people).The Subject of the Study is the c collision of lives, considered from the perspective of philosophical analysis, which allows us to approach their study comprehensively, find their deep foundations, and present them as a personal and social problem.The Purpose of the Study is to show the difficulties in resolving these collision, both in legal and moral aspects, and to reveal possible ways to resolve them.Main Theoretical Provisions of the Article. The article substantiates the idea that the problem of collision of lives is a philosophical problem, and broadly refers to a number of situations when saving the life of one person (group of people) is possible only by taking the life of another person (group of other people). The philosophical analysis required a typology of these situations. In this regard, the article presents a typology based on the features of choice in a situation of collision of lives: the choice between saving one's own life and saving the life of another person; a choice made by a third person; a choice made by a researcher (patient, subject, or their relatives) when applying biomedical technologies that relate to the boundaries of life; a choice made at the level of the state or society as a whole. Some of the situations related to the collision of lives are resolved through the mechanism of legal regulation, while others are resolved by public consensus, self - control on the part of the scientific community, finding a fair balance of private and public interests, and moral choices based either on the ethics of utilitarianism or the ethics of egalitarianism. But both ethical concepts imply the use of the principle of «the lesser of two evils» in the situation of choice, which often generates a sense of guilt in the person who made the choice. From the standpoint of the moral ideal, the choice in a situation of collision of lives will always be unfair, since the life of each person has an absolute value and there is always a victim in this choice, who loses his life. Therefore, the principle of «lesser evil» is relevant only within the framework of situational ethics. However, the problem of the collision of lives has deep ontological roots, the origins of which should be sought in the laws of biological evolution.