MORAL LUCK

Moral luck, a philosophy founded and developed by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, studies human moral judgement. This philosophical theory studies how uncontrollable factors impact our moral judgement and has profound impacts on debates related to free will, responsibility, and justice.

To help understand moral luck, let’s begin with an example. In Scenario A, a drunk driver is going home and hits a child. In Scenario B, a drunk driver is going home and gets there safely. While both individuals committed the same act, a debate arises regarding whether the two drunk drivers are immoral to the same degree, or if the one who hit the child is more immoral than the other due to the circumstance of the child happening to be on the street, a factor outside of their control.

There are 4 types of moral luck. The first is resultant luck; this luck is regarding the luckiness of the outcome of a situation. Take the drunk driver scenarios, for example: one got lucky and didn’t hit anyone, but another did. The second type of moral luck is circumstantial luck, which is luck from what situation you are in. One example is if you’re living under Nazi rule. An individual who lived in Germany during this period and was a Nazi soldier likely would not have committed as many atrocious acts if they were not living in the Nazi era, as they wouldn’t have had the chance to be a Nazi soldier. Thirdly, we have constitutive luck. This is luck in who you are, closely related to personality. For example, someone born prone to having anger issues versus someone born with naturally calm capabilities. Would the individual who is already hot tempered be equally responsible for their anger as the individual who is calm? Finally, we have causal luck. This is luck in the preexisting events in your life that influence your actions and choices.

To put it shortly, moral luck challenges the idea that we should blame people equally for what they choose. Luck, or factors that are not in that individuals’ control, can influence our thought process on how immoral and unethical their actions are. One popular philosophy against moral luck is Kantianism. Kantianism focuses on what the intention of the individual is rather than the outcome, and doesn’t consider luck since it doesn’t change what the person intended to do. Kant, simply put, only judges the factors that people can control.