"According to the philosophical literature, you have "moral luck." Your punch or your shove didn't end up killing someone. Many people reading this article will have thrown a punch in their lives. Many will have pushed or barged someone. And yet you are freely reading among the general population."
"The term "moral luck" first appeared in a 1976 paper by the British philosopher Bernard Williams. Williams asked whether "moral judgment" should only apply to things within our control. The standard view - a view inherited from Immanuel Kant - was that if you tried your best, you should be judged on that. Good intentions make something moral; bad intentions make it immoral."
"Williams thought this was wrong, or at least far too neat. He asked us to consider cases where two people do exactly the same thing - act with the same intention, the same recklessness, the same character - and yet one ends up a killer and the other"
A man named Nick punched someone outside a pub, an action that resulted in the victim's death when he fell into a glass window and severed his carotid artery. Nick received a 10-year prison sentence for manslaughter. However, many people have thrown punches or committed similar aggressive acts without fatal consequences and face no legal repercussions. This disparity illustrates the philosophical concept of moral luck, introduced by philosopher Bernard Williams in 1976. Williams challenged the traditional Kantian view that moral judgment should depend solely on intention and effort. Instead, he argued that outcomes—which often lie beyond an actor's control—significantly influence moral and legal judgments, creating situations where identical actions receive drastically different evaluations based on circumstance.
Read at Big Think
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