Yes that does sound very close to Venats situation, that’s the whole point.
No you’ve misunderstood. The general view is distinct and one can in fact further the aims of the general view by violating the individual. We do this with deer all the time, culling the population in order to protect the ability of the species in general from collapsing due to overeating. The potential for life oftentimes runs counter to the protection of individual life, which wouldn’t work if they just collapse into each other no?
It is very much not a utilitarian numbers game, as shown by the very core of the thing we are arguing against. Let me once again use an example. Imagine grizzled bears are endangered and our protagonist holds that they should be protected and their species maintained. Now this selfsame person finds themself in a situation, not at all their fault, where they are about to be mauled by a grizzly. Killing the grizzly won’t permanently damn the population but it would kill that individual life. I can’t assume either that my killing will somehow lead to more life as that is outside of my control, all I can say is I’m reducing the number of lives by one. By your thinking, if the person holds that the potential for grizzly’s at all to exist is worthy of protecting, then because that is just an “infinite set of specific cases” they shouldn’t kill the grizzly and thus would die? Does that seem logical and true to you?
It all leads back to valuing the potential for life in general to exist vs the potential for specific life to exist. In inter generational ethics there’s the concept of a threshold, a point that current generations must reach in order to be just to those not yet born. The threshold would not require banning abortions if I believe it important to maintain the potential for life, as the potential for life is needed for a basic just society, whereas forcing a pregnant parent to die for their child is very much not.
You say this but haven’t justified it. Why are they the same? The examples I posted I think show a distinction between the two. How would you reconcile that if they are, as you say, the same?
Because of the reasons for it! A person forced to die for an evil cause is an evil act is evil. A person forced to die for a defensible cause can be just and defensible. Do you think conscription by the Allies in WW2 was an evil act?