Moral Accountability

Jul 20, 2011 08:25

If any action can have a variety of results, good, bad, or indifferent, with the end result perhaps far removed from the original action, and since no one can know everything about a specific situation, can anyone be held morally accountable for anything? I was thinking about this just yesterday.

I would say that morality and ethics is what you do *with the fact-set at your disposal at the time*. No one (in that sense) can be held *absolutely accountable* for effect, except for a Supreme Being. But for intent, each of us can be held accountable for *our responses to the fact-set, as we understand it*.

In that sense, a man who wants to commit adultery but who has no *opportunity* to do so has (as mentioned in the Gospels) "committed adultery in his heart" already. Only circumstances prevent him. The same applies to murder or any moral infraction. The intent creates the personality, not the results. A priest may, by carelessly dropping a banana peel at the top of a stairwell, be the proximate cause of a death, but he has no intent to do so, while a psychopath without a banana peel can't cause anyone to slip and fall, although he wants to. This is the basis of the distinction between murder and manslaughter.

The psychopath is the greater threat to society.

A plan of murder may result in murder, but it may also result in the heroic efforts that prevent such a murder. In that case, the plot results, not in a murder, but in a heroic lifesaving effort. (Think of an arsonist who sets fire to an apartment block.)

Also, I would add that "end result" and "original action" are arbitrary points. There is no "end result" unless you specify one, nor is there an "original action," unless you specify one. Which gets us all the way back to the Prime Mover.
Previous post Next post
Up