Moral Luck
In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.
Sam Harris • Free Will
John Doris’s book Lack of Character noted that “situational factors are often better predictors of behaviour than personal factors.” Baggini suggests that plenty of Germans living under the Third Reich would otherwise have led “blameless lives” if they had not been put in an environment that brought out their worst selves. By the same token, “many
... See moreTom Butler Bowdon • 50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting Seeing - Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books (50 Classics)
" The way you are is, in every last detail, a matter of luck —good or bad ... In the end, luck swallows everything : this is one way of conveying the fundamental respect in which there can be no ultimate responsibility." — Galen Strawson
Sloww Sunday: Luck, Same Team, Three Deep Questions, & More
In general, even the worst atrocities typically have been committed not simply because they are bad but as a side effect of other actions or as a means to some other end.
William MacAskill • What We Owe the Future
"In the end, luck swallows everything ... It all comes down to luck: luck—good or bad—in being born the way we are, luck—good or bad—in what then happens to shape us. We can’t be ultimately responsible for how we are in such a way as to have absolutely, buck-stopping responsibility for what we do." — Galen Strawson