Amber Di Peppe
210178911
Julie Allen
5 April 2010
Critique: Thomas Nagel's Essay Moral Luck Moral philosophers have not acknowledged any connection between luck and morality. In fact, we as humans tend to disregard moral judgment when we are faced with instances of luck. Moral judgment does not just categorize actions as good or bad, this term is indeed applied to a person’s own character. If there are certain circumstances where the person who is being judged is not under control, then the act of judgment is also undermined or the judgment is not reliable in some way. In his essay Moral Luck, Thomas Nagel addresses the issue of why we praise and blame other people for moral reasons. If someone pushes someone out of the way of an oncoming vehicle at the last moment, they are a hero. Likewise, if someone hits someone with their car, they are a careless and evil person. But Nagel argues that there are so many more factors involved in morality and elements that effect moral luck. He defines moral luck as a situation “where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment” (Nagel, 466). People for so long have made judgments about people based on the actions they commit. This appears to be a good idea, because the actions say a lot about the person, presumably. However, they stop thinking about it there and disregard the factors that go into what a person does which the person has no control over. Obviously this raises a puzzling philosophical question, because it seems that when we judge people and make decisions about them and these judgments are largely determined by moral luck, we seem to undermine true morality altogether. The problem is that we cannot see into another's heart, and the only way we can judge anything about them is by their