Moral Luck And The Social Construction

The problem of objectivity is always a central topic of moral philosophy. Many ethic controversies are caused by it. At present, modern morality under the control of rationality, is immersed in the dilemma of moral legalism, moral objectivity is confronted with the risk of bankruptcy. According to the facts:the disorder relations among modern ethics systems, loss of value and meanings, moral indifference and so on, moral philosophers propose a post-Kantian question, that is, is it possible that morality has a completely rational basis, frankly, is it possible to build a absolute objective morality. However, we can’t abandon all special factors, completely leaving a personal view. Emotions, desires and characters and so on will influence our moral choices and moral evaluations. We should not only responsible for the parts we can control on my own, but also responsible for the parts under the control of the luck. The problem of moral luck inspires moral philosophers to review the question of moral objectivity once again. Undoubtedly, modern morality has deeply been into the unlimited debating on "ethics basis", in order to establish objective morality, which is beyond accidental factors. There is no any single system that can avoid accidental invasion and help us live a good life without any controversy, actually and completely. Contrary, the different suggestions about ethic basis deepen our impression on moral luck. It is easy to abandon the influence on morality from luck, in order to avoid the instability and complexity, in according with the universal preference to pursuit a simple and clear picture about "good life"; at the same time, to keep a place, from where we can get a spiritual comfort, and thus satisfy our expectations for justice, by cancelling the actually inequality on talent, environment, status and some other occasional differences. However, some dominant concepts, such like "obligation", are not enough powerful to prevent us from desiring various kinds of "exceptions". We always live in many conflict scenes and get some experience about moral luck. It is hard for modern morality to solve the difficulties brought from luck. Kant’s ethics definitely refuses moral luck, but too harsh. Some demands of it are against to ordinary intuitions, which are rooted in the normal heart. Utilitarianism asks for a clear moral calculation, so as to build a universal reasoning process. At the end, it is out of control of luck. Virtue ethics, the protester of both, accept luck in a narrow way, to some extent. It believes that our moral characters are affected by luck in the training process. Its weakness is that virtue ethics loses the moral principles. Obviously, none of the three is satisfied us, owing to different defects and moral difficulties. Some of them demand to hash, on contrary, some of them demand too loosely. From the view of real life, outside of moral systems, Williams and Nagel consider that luck will make an actual influence on morality. As a kind of abnormal phenomenon, moral luck itself is controversial. Not all moral philosophers think it actually damages the objectivity of morality. For Williams et al, moral luck is agreeable with their moral theories. Moral luck is a result of social construction. Only in a certain context, moral luck is reality.