| Article | |
|---|---|
| Article name | Moral Luck as a Normative Challenge |
| Authors | Shevchenko A.A. Doctor of Philosophy, shev@philosophy.nsc.ru |
| Bibliographic description | Shevchenko A. A. Moral Luck as a Normative Challenge // Humanitarian Vector. 2020. Vol. 15, No. 4. PP. 68–74. DOI: 10.21209/1996-7853-2020-15-4-68-74. |
| Section | AXIOLOGY OF CULTURE |
| UDK | 17.01 |
| DOI | 10.21209/1996-7853-2020-15-4-68-74 |
| Article type | |
| Annotation | Chance and luck permeate our lives. They can be explained differently ‒ as the will of gods, the violation of a cause-effect relationship, the distribution of probabilities, a win in a natural or social lottery. Since the mid- 1970s the problem of “moral luck” has occupied an important place in philosophical discussions about the nature of moral normativity, the criteria for moral responsibility, and the connection between the rational and the moral in the justification of human actions. The article contains a brief analysis of the main approaches to the problem of moral luck and argues for the advantages of an “epistemic” solution, which allows mitigating the inconsistencies of our intuitions regarding moral luck. This approach also maintains the status of morality as a supreme normative system, interpreting the “luckiness” of a moral subject as the outcome of a set of moral and cognitive characteristics. This allows us to provide rational explanations of moral choice, and to better understand the subsequent attribution of responsibility. In addition, such an “epistemic” approach allows analyzing the problems of moral and epistemic luck as some unity in the general framework of virtue epistemology. On the whole, the problem of moral luck is regarded as a serious philosophical challenge, calling into question the customary rational foundations of moral normativity. The author concludes that it is possible to meet this challenge on the basis of traditional understanding of moral agency as a set of moral and cognitive features (ethical and dianoethical virtues). |
| Key words | moral luck, moral subject, normativity, rationality, epistemic luck, virtue epistemology |
| Article information | |
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