Our Flawed Morality

Morality is a human construct used to differentiate between what is good and bad. However there is a flaw in the fundamentals of how we all evaluate morality. Through this post I intend share my insights ( greatly influenced by Thomas Nagel ), on why I believe our moral evaluation is much complex than what we think it is.

To aid in understanding this better, I would like to share an incident that occurred in my life. Coincidently, this incident that I am about to share also happens to be similar to a story most philosophy students get told. So if you are a philosophy student and you come across a similar story, Trust me!!! I didn't make this up, it freaking happened with me

Moral Responsibility

This incident occurred on a cold windy night in the year of 2015, were I and my friend was traveling back home after attending a party that we both were invited to.

Initially I had planned to leave the party early and hence we mutually agreed to get our own transport which in this case was our bikes. Like all parties we too had a ton of alcohol. At the start I promised myself, Just one glass of whiskey . The alcohol got into me. My plans changed and I decided to wait longer (bad idea) as a result got more drunk. Lol!!!. My friend on the other hand was also drunk but not as drunk as me. We had a great time. The party ended and now it was time for us to go home. Completely intoxicated I started my bike for a long journey home. My Friend somewhat drunk followed me with his bike. We decided to take the same route as our homes were nearby. Both of us were vibing on our journey back until a freak accident.

As we were riding, suddenly out of nowhere a cat jumped in front of my friends bike and he ran over it. Immediately we stopped at the scene to check on the cat only to find out it had died. Hearing the squeak of the wheels a man appeared at the scene. He claimed to be the owner of the cat(which I still don't believe). He started to accuse my friend of killing he's cat. My drunk ass tried the best to explain the owner of the cat that it was not anyone's fault but just a misfortune. We both reeked of alcohol and the owner of the cat used this opportunity, to call the cops on us if we didn't give him the compensation. After an hour or so of arguing my friend eventually decided to pay the amount to avoid further consequences of the cops getting involved and we fled the scene. Both of us got home safely, I passed out on my bed and for my friend I don't think he slept, obviously because he felt responsible for the cat's death .

So a philosophical question here, Is he morally responsible for the cats death? Most would argue yes! because he killed the cat. I agree taking a life is indeed immoral. But you see both of us first violated a rule by drunk riding. And for an instance assume, had the cat jumped into the same spot a few moments earlier then I would have been the one to run over the cat right?!.

My point here is that we can't blame or rather question the morality of my friend because of the outcome. Yes the outcome was bad. But he didn't intentionally want to kill the cat, it was an accident. The cat decided to come in his way, which was something out of he's control. My friend got unlucky and that led you to question his morality . So how can one judge the morality of an individual when luck is a factor?! As mentioned earlier we both committed the immoral act of drunk riding but due to just luck the outcome ended up being an unfortunate one for my friend. So who do we morally blame here then? Imo this is the part where morality appears to be flawed.

Fix The Flaw ?

Thomas Nagel an American philosopher, speaks about this flaw of morality in his essay called the Moral luck and he describes the different types of moral luck that one must take note of before passing a moral judgment. Taking account of the different types of moral luck that exist, one can improve moral evaluation greatly. We shall look at a few of these. If you are curious to know more about moral evaluation then I highly recommend you to check it out here

Circumstantial Moral Luck

This is a type of moral luck that is brought onto one based on his/her circumstances. For example, a child born to a terrorist in most of the case will be raised to become a terrorist and follow " resort to violence " ideology. Similarly a child born into a soldiers family , if grows up to be a soldier, will be seen as a hero. Clearly the child didn't get to choose who to be born into in either of the case.

Resultant Moral Luck

Resultant luck is when two people perform the same task and the outcome ends up being different for each other. Consider the same incident I mentioned earlier. Myself and my friend performed the same act of drunk riding. We both were morally wrong here but an external factor that was something out of anyone's control changed the end outcome for my friend.

Constitutive Moral Luck

Certain toxic behaviour are picked up through the genes of parents. For example if you are born to parents that are short-tempered you are also likely to be short-tempered. Although toxic behaviour can be corrected with counseling, it is just that one has to put extra efforts to correct it than the one born without it.

Final Notes

The teachings of Nagel does help in understanding moral evaluation better. In my opinion nothing in philosophy hold eternally true including this. But for now this is the closest we have to making some sense of morality.

References - Moral luck

Thank you for reading. Also feel free to check out my other posts here