Nagel develops the idea of moral luck to challenge and perhaps replace what he terms the condition of control, which is the idea that people cannot be morally evaluated, and thus held morally responsible, if they did not have control over the event (Nagel, 723-724). We often evoke this notion in situations where someone commits a terrible act, but there was some aspect of the world they could not control that led to the situation. For example, if a person is driving down the road safely, following all laws, and a child jumps in front of her and dies from the accident, the driver would not be morally judged for this action, as she could not have prevented it. However, Nagel suggests there are indeed times when morally evaluate people who do not control a significant aspect of what they do or have done.
A person has moral luck when, even though a significant aspect of what she does is not within her control, we still regard her as subject to moral evaluation (Nagel, 723). Moral luck can be both bad and good luck, with the moral evaluation either being praise or shame. Moral bad luck suggests a person has …show more content…
Here, the character of the agent is constant across hypothetical situations, and the circumstances which the agent is placed under differs (Nagel, 724). For Stangl, his character would seem to have stayed constant, whether the Nazi Regime took over or not. Stangl was very good at following orders and was very ambitious to work his way up his career latter (Sereny, 27). Thus, if the Nazi Regime did not take over, and Stangl had stayed at his job as a police officer, the energy he successfully invested into death camps could have been invested into his job on the police force (Sereny, 145). If this was the case, perhaps Stangl would instead have been praised as a great officer. Thus, Stangl has been subject to luck in circumstances, as he could not control whether the Nazis took
A person has moral luck when, even though a significant aspect of what she does is not within her control, we still regard her as subject to moral evaluation (Nagel, 723). Moral luck can be both bad and good luck, with the moral evaluation either being praise or shame. Moral bad luck suggests a person has …show more content…
Here, the character of the agent is constant across hypothetical situations, and the circumstances which the agent is placed under differs (Nagel, 724). For Stangl, his character would seem to have stayed constant, whether the Nazi Regime took over or not. Stangl was very good at following orders and was very ambitious to work his way up his career latter (Sereny, 27). Thus, if the Nazi Regime did not take over, and Stangl had stayed at his job as a police officer, the energy he successfully invested into death camps could have been invested into his job on the police force (Sereny, 145). If this was the case, perhaps Stangl would instead have been praised as a great officer. Thus, Stangl has been subject to luck in circumstances, as he could not control whether the Nazis took