Two drivers are equally careless. One arrives home safely. The other, by sheer bad luck, hits a child who runs into the road. We treat them very differently — the first faces no consequences; the second may face years in prison and a lifetime of grief. Yet the act was identical, the choice was identical, the character was identical. Should the difference in outcome change the moral judgment?
Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel sharpened the question in the 1970s. Our intuition says yes — the unlucky driver IS worse off morally, blameworthy in a way the lucky driver isn't. But our principle says no — what's under your control is what makes you praiseworthy or blameworthy, and outcomes (especially when they hinge on luck) aren't fully under your control. Something has to give.
Nagel identified several kinds of moral luck. Resultant luck: the outcome of your choice. Circumstantial luck: the situations you find yourself in (a German in 1939 had moral choices forced on them an American didn't). Constitutive luck: the character you happened to develop. Causal luck: the very fact that you have any agency at all, in a universe of prior causes. Once you start counting, the supposedly luck-free domain of moral responsibility shrinks alarmingly. The contemporary picture: either we revise our intuitions, our principles, or our concept of responsibility itself. None of the three is comfortable.