The Distance Between Morality and Luck

The Distance Between Morality and Luck

In the moral realm, I tend to align my intuitions with Kantian morality, forming a very strict interpretation of those actions which carry moral worth. As one who believes that the world is not governed by determinism, I place a great deal of emphasis on moral evaluation. This is why I find Nagel’s Moral Luck article so troubling. Nagel describes a concept which, if accurate, completely undercuts our conception of morality, disabling the ability to apply moral worth to decisions. I find, however, that one can tackle his dilemma and reveal holes in his argument in a manner that would allow us to uphold the concept of morality and moral evaluation in the world. This is my aim.

Nagel’s primary concern is in holding people morally accountable for certain things which are out of their control. “…we feel that the appropriateness of moral assessment is easily undermined by the discovery that the act or attribute, no matter how good or bad, is not under the person’s control” (Nagel 25). For Nagel, moral luck is defined as an instance in which a significant aspect of what someone does is dependent on factors outside of his control, yet we still treat him as the primary object of moral judgment. Nagel’s theory is that moral judgment erodes as a result of the ordinary idea of moral assessment, and without altering moral assessment based on the influence of moral luck, moral judgment necessarily dissolves.

Nagel discusses four types of moral luck, which I would like to describe before describing various examples and implementations of these types of luck, and responses for them. First, Nagel discusses constitutive luck, or luck in the kind of person you are. That is, your particular charact...

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...essed for those decisions.

Nagel constructs a number of compelling arguments in attacking Kantian morality, but in the end he simply misses the point. While numerous influences and external factors may affect the decision of a person, it is still the duty of that person to find the information that is correct and lead himself to the correct moral decision. If Nagel were correct, we would be unable to apply moral evaluations to anyone. This dissolution of morality looms over us threateningly until we realize that its strength is renewed with our own deeper focus. Nagel succeeds only in focusing morality on the aspects of human decision-making that are most important. The threat to our morality is the inability to recognize those characteristics which matter most.

Works Cited

Nagel, T. (1979) Mortal Questions. Cambridge University Press, New York.