Moral Luck, Responsibility, and Systems of Tort Liability

Emmanuel Voyiakis

doi:10.1007/s11158-020-09465-1

Abstract

Bernard Williams drew our attention to what might be wrong with denying the role of luck in our understanding of agency and responsibility. Susan Wolf and David Enoch, in separate works, have asked us to focus instead on what might be virtuous and valuable in embracing that role, and on how our institutions might assist us in that regard. They claim that the agent who ‘takes’ a responsibility that law or morality do not already assign to them may be displaying a special moral virtue or exercising a distinctive moral power. I raise some objections to Wolf’s and Enoch’s case for that claim, and query some of its purported institutional implications for tort law systems.

Highlights

Debates about moral luck have gripped the interest of tort theory because they promise insights into the conditions under which our institutions may require an agent to make repair for accidents or other harmful events.[1]
Bernard Williams drew our attention to what might be wrong with denying the role of luck in our understanding of agency and responsibility
They have argued that the agent who ‘takes’ a responsibility that the law or morality does not already assign to them may be displaying a special moral virtue or exercising a distinctive moral power, and they have accounted for that virtue or power in terms of the way taking responsibility enhances the agent’s sense of being-in-the-world

Summary

Introduction

Debates about moral luck have gripped the interest of tort theory because they promise insights into the conditions under which our institutions may require an agent to make repair for accidents or other harmful events.[1] It seems beyond dispute, and I will assume that it is, that our institutions may do this only when the accident is connected to that person’s agency in the appropriate way. Arguments about moral luck matter for tort law precisely because they help us think about what counts as an appropriate connection between an action (or event) and an agent in relation to questions of responsibility for repair. My aim in this paper is to trace and discuss a particular line of thought about luck and agency, and the significance of their relationship between the two for the justification of systems of tort liability

Voyiakis

Conclusion