Luck, Moral Guilt and Legal Guilt Essay -- Philosophy essays

Luck, Moral Guilt and Legal Guilt The question of whether luck should swindle a role in our assessment of new(prenominal) people is native to human beau monde. Our judicial laws express the view that we are responsible for our actions-in other words, luck does have a bearing on the determination of court- companionshiped guilt since legal guilt is theoretically based on good guilt, this means that luck is usually find outed to have a bearing on moral guilt as well. However, there are serious difficulties with this trunk of judgment. Indeed, I believe that it is neither advantageous nor even logically slick to accede to either side of this debate simply admitting to one thoroughgoing (e.g., that luck should never be considered when assessing others, or vice versa) automatically creates a multitude of problems. If we do consider luck when assessing someones moral character, we open ourselves to the truly real possibility of avengeing two people un equally for the identic al exact action or intention, which is incompatible with our notion of justice. Yet if we ascertain that luck should not be a factor, we are in proceeds embracing the notion that we are not responsible for our actions, and in such(prenominal) a case, punishment would be futile without legal guilt and punishment, however, society would be chaotic, which again assaults our notion of justice. We shall see that this publishing is closely fastened in with the more general idea of free pull up stakes vs. determinism, which itself is a fundamentally disturbing problem. As long as the free go away debate remains inconclusive-as most people feel it is-so too will the debate over moral luck remain unresolved. In order to examine this issue, it is beneficial to start with a specific example consider a person who happens to ... ... leads to chaos. Yet factoring in luck fails to punish those who are immoral but have good luck, while toilsome only those who have bad luck. I maintain that a cheering answer to this question is impossible because, as I stated earlier, the issue of moral guilt in relation to luck is based firmly upon the idea of free will versus determinism, a problem which is fundamentally troublesome. With no clear way to decide the issue of free will vs. determinism, it is equally unclear how we should decide the issue of moral guilt. Should luck play a part in the assessment of a persons character? As I asserted at the start of this discussion, I believe that such a determination is logically implausible. WORKS CITED Nagel, Thomas. Moral Luck. Reason and Responsibility, 9th edition. Joel Feinberg, ed. Belmont, CA Wadsworth publication Co., 1996 515-521.