How Lucky Can You Get?

Abstract

In their symposium on ‘Moral Luck’, Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel argue against some of the basic assumptions of an influential Kantian tradition in ethics. According to this tradition, ‘there is one basic form of value, moral value, which is immune to luck’.¹ It is clear to Williams and Nagel that this is not the case. They differ, however, in what they take the consequences of the involvement of luck with morality to be.² For Nagel, they lead to our living with a number of unresolvable contradictions. When we argue, it seems to him irrational to condemn or praise people for features of their character, or for consequences of their actions, if those features and consequences are not within their control. On the other hand, when we act, we find moral judgements occurring involuntarily in just these contexts. For Nagel, it seems that we simply live with these tensions between rational reflection and moral practice. Williams’s conclusion is very different. His main conclusion seems to be that once we have recognised that morality is inextricably bound up with luck, we can see how, in certain circumstances, luck can make us immune to moral considerations. In seeing this, Williams argues, we attack the assumption that morality has an unconditional claim on our interests and desires.