Moral Judgment And The Limits Of Luck

The Kantian moral concept in many ways catches our ordinary moral intuitions, he he Id that moral judgments directed at an agent should exclude the consideration of luck and ought to treat the rational will as the object of moral judgments. However in our moral practice, people accpet the control principle that one can only take responsibilit y for actions under his or her control. The trick is that the influence of luck is in fact p ervasive, none of our action is strictly under one’s control and free of luck. If we cond uct the control principle throughly, moral judgment would lose its object. Negal categ orized four types of luck and thought luck influenced all aspects of our actions and prevented us from appropriate moral judgments. This arouses the moral luck problem which concerns whether moral luck exists and how it influences moral judgment. This essay considers the idea of Negal, Williams and others for and against moral luck, arg uing against Negal and holds that four types of luck influence moral judgments in a very limited way and fail to undermine the foundation of moral judgment. We only ad mit the weight of luck under conditions of ignorance and coerce. This theory in one re spect renders fair moral judgments possible and in another avoids the some criticisms at the proponents of moral luck.