Examples Of Moral Luck By Thomas Nagel

Nate Witte
Precis 1
In Moral Luck, Thomas Nagel argues that the consequence of actions are relevant to moral evaluation. For example people blame a person for the consequence of their actions that were out of their control and we are judging him solely based on that. For example there are two drivers driving drunk, both crash their cars. However one kills a person as a result of the crash. They both essentially did the same action, but because of that accidental death, we judge that person in a more negative light for something that was outside of his control. This unforeseen variable, the pedestrian, of something like this happening is called moral luck.
According to Nagel, there are four ways that moral assessments are subject to luck. The

One of the main examples he uses to illustrate moral luck is the accident and the driver. In this example he states that if the driver drives onto the sidewalk and there is no one there is exactly the same recklessness as if the driver drives onto the sidewalk and kills a person. It is the exact same degree of recklessness in both situations, the only difference is one is charged with manslaughter over a variable he can not control.(Nagel) He further explains other situations such as: an attempted murder and a successful one, “Anna Karenina goes off with Vronsky, Gauguin leaves his family, Chamberlain signs the Munich Agreement, the Decembrists persuade the troops under their command to revolt against the czar, the American colonies declared their independence from Britain, you introduce two people in an attempt at match-making.”(Nagel 5) All of these situations have some sort of variable that is uncontrollable. If each of these would have succeeded or failed, we would have judged them

One of the main points that he states is that people can not be morally judged for what is not their fault or circumstances out of their control. This main point that he tries to get across is valid because we should not judge people based on what they can not control. This judgment that we make is not accurate, it is all relative to one’s views. Instead we should try to make judgements as objectively as possible to avoid this narrow minded thinking. This is because the world is not all black and white, but shades of gray that there potentially could be no true right or wrong. Moral luck is essentially a shade of gray because the judgment that one makes is determined by the situation that has uncontrollable variables. The two possible solutions to moral luck is to either explain away the appearance of moral luck or to accept it and modify the conditions of