Moral Luck

The case of moral luck was introduced by Williams Bernard and developed by Thomas Nagel in their articles respectively. Both raised the question whether luck can influence the judgment of morality. In this essay, the definition of moral luck and four kinds of moral luck by Williams and Nagel will be discussed through several case examples, and then followed with some arguments from Judith Andre, Donna Dickenson and David Enoch and Andrei Marmor who disagree with the concept of moral luck.

Let take a simple example from Nagel’s paper to acquire a brief understanding on the idea of moral luck. Driver A and B were both drunk when driving home. Drive A passed the red light and killed a child who was passing the street while driver B got home safely. To Williams and Nagel, driver A should be, of course, responsible for manslaughter under the laws, but also should be morally treated as the same as driver B since the difference outcomes are solely based on luck. As Williams argues “luck of this kind affects whether he will be justified or not, since if it strikes, he will not be justified” (Williams, p.25). Therefore, in his book “Moral Luck”, Williams introduced a new term “moral luck” referring to “luck that occurs when an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment despite the fact that a significant aspect of what she is assessed for depends on factors beyond her control” (Nelkin).

Nagel agrees to Williams’ idea and categorizes ‘moral luck’ into four different types. They are constitutive, circumstantial, resultant, and causal luck. Constitutive luck refers to “the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclination, capacities, and temperament”. In anoth...

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...g the intention is, or how certain we feel about it”, (Enoch and Marmor, p. 422).

Williams’s and Nagel’s concept of moral luck encounter more disagreement than being agreed since moral luck is not universally applicable in every situation. The existence of either motive or agent-regret will, in some cases, be enigma since they are private matter and unknown to the rest of us. Therefore, the case of moral luck has been yet remains unsolved due to its inconsistency. On the other hand, if motives and intentions (of being moral) are not counted and/or agent-regret does exist, it will be unfair to the person who is incorrectly treated since the result is actually out of their control. Thus, the moral luck is a sensitive matter and should be applied per case based on the presented facts. There is no such universal formula for relevance of moral luck in each situation.