Thomas Nagel Moral Luck Paradox Summary

Lauren Johnson
Professor Parsons
Philosophy 1000
March 5, 2017
Nagel’s Moral Luck Paradox In this paper I will explain Thomas Nagel’s view of our moral practices being paradoxical and how they cannot be resolved. I’ll begin by presenting the overall argument, then what he thinks to be the paradoxical nature of our moral practices. Afterwards, I will explain why paradoxes are to be unresolvable in his opinion. At the end of the paper, I will raise an objective to Nagel’s argument.
According to Thomas Nagel, at the heart of our moral practices lies a paradox. A paradox is an argument that is apparently valid, has apparently true premises, and has an apparently false conclusion. This paradoxical argument also is apparently sound. A paradox is

An example of circumstantial moral luck existing would be, for instance, if two married men happen to find a stripper attractive and are willing to each pay her to have sex with them. The stripper only agrees to accept the money from one of the guys and only have sex with one of them. Therefore, only one of them cheats on his wife. Although he is the only one who cheated, they both have morally wrong intentions. But, according to society’s view, only people who cheat are the ones who are morally wrong and who are to blame. Society will not shame the married man who did not cheat, although it was beyond his control, thus creating circumstantial moral

The last type of moral luck that I want to address in this essay is the concept of moral control and moral responsibility. In Nagel’s view, a person can be morally responsible only for what he does; but what he does results from a great deal that he does not do; therefore he is not morally responsible for what he is and is not responsible for. This is not a contradiction, but it is a paradox. Isn’t it obvious that there is a connection between these problems about responsibility and control? He states that a condition of moral responsibility is that the person has control over the factors that he or she is morally judged for. Controversially, if that person’s actions are due to factors beyond their control, then they are not morally responsible. Nagel believes that if the only difference between two people is out of their control, then they should not be judged differently. Everything seems to result from the combined influence of factors, antecedent and posterior to action, that are not within the person’s control. Since he cannot be responsible for them, he cannot be responsible for their results. With that being said, Nagel claims, that through the four types of moral luck, our moral judgments are almost always dependent on factors that are beyond our control. Because he believes that the condition of control is not satisfied in most of our moral