Is it fair to judge people for things that were out of their control?
Two equally careless drivers run a red light, and only one hits a child. We blame them very differently, but is that fair?
▶ Start the storyMany of us feel it is not, and yet we do it all the time. Moral luck describes cases where an agent is blamed or praised for an action or its consequences even though they lacked full control over either. Bernard Williams introduced the term, and he and Thomas Nagel developed it.
The classic example is two careless drivers. Driver A runs a red light in a moment of inattention, and a child is crossing: the child dies. Driver B also runs a red light, but no one is crossing, and he gets only a ticket. Most people blame A far more. But there is no difference in what the two drivers controlled. The only disparity is an external, uncontrollable event.
Driver A
- Runs a red light
- A child is crossing, and dies
- Heavily blamed
Driver B
- Runs a red light
- Nobody is crossing
- Just a ticket
That clashes with a principle most of us accept: we intuitively link responsibility with voluntary action, and the law echoes it. Nagel found four kinds of luck sneaking in. There is luck in the results of what we do, in the circumstances we find ourselves in, in the character we were given, and in the causes behind our actions. Nagel's own example of circumstantial luck: people in Hitler's Germany might have led very different lives had they been moved abroad in 1929.
Philosophers have three replies. A rationalist says equal fault deserves equal blame, whatever the consequences. A consequentialist says blame should depend on the consequences. Susan Wolf's compromise is that outsiders should blame the two drivers equally, but the unlucky driver should accept a special connection to what happened and blame himself more.
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Recap
Two equally careless acts can get very different blame depending on luck, which clashes with the idea that we are only responsible for what we control.
💡 A trick to remember it · Same red light, different roll of the dice: blame often follows the dice.
Surprising fact · People rate identical investments as less moral when they end in a loss that was beyond the investor's control.
Connects to
- 📜 Why did Kant say you must not lie even to a murderer at your door?
- 🏊 If you'd muddy your clothes to save a drowning child, why not to save a child far away?
- 🏛️ Why did Aristotle say being good is a habit you practise, not a rule you follow?
- 🧭 Could you ever have chosen otherwise?
- Bernard williams
- Thomas nagel
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.