Table Of ContentINNOCENCE LOST
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INNOCENCE LOST
An Examination of Inescapable
Moral Wrongdoing
Christopher W. Gowans
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1994
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland Madrid
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1994 by Christopher W. Gowans
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gowans, Christopher W.
Innocence lost: an examination of inescapable moral wrongdoing /
Christopher W. Gowans
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508517-5
1. Decision-making (Ethics) I. Title. II. Title: Inescapable
moral wrongdoing
BJ1419.G69 1994
170—dc20 93-11593
2 4 68 10 9 7 5 31
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For my parents,
William J. Gffwans ana June L. Gowans
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Preface
Several years ago in a report on public opinion, The New York Times observed
that "one of every six Americans says simultaneously that abortion is murder and
that it is sometimes the best course" (April 26, 1989 p. Al). This might be taken
to reveal, what opinion polls sometimes do reveal, that some people have inco-
herent beliefs. For, if abortion is murder, then it is always wrong; but if it is
sometimes "the best course," then on those occasions it would seem to be wrong
not to have an abortion. If this were the case, sometimes a woman considering
an abortion would act wrongly no matter what she did. Surely, it may be said,
this is incoherent. Many philosophers may well have had this reaction upon
reading this statement. But it was not my reaction. Without agreeing with the
statement, it did not strike me as being an incoherent position. For in my view it
is possible for moral wrongdoing to be inescapable.
I came to believe this, or perhaps discovered that I already believed it, a
number of years ago while reflecting on Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. In the
second act of the play, a Salvation Army shelter devoted to helping the bodies
and souls of the poor is faced with the prospect of closing its doors unless it
accepts a donation from an unscrupulous arms manufacturer who is willing to
sell his product to any country, whether its cause be just or unjust. Major Bar-
bara, thinking perhaps of those unjustly killed by weapons sold to finance the
donation, believes it would be wrong to accept it. But her superior, Mrs. Baines,
looking at the indigent persons around her, believes it would be wrong not to
accept it. Might not they both be correct in their respective beliefs? I thought
then, and still think, that this might well be the case, that this could be a situa-
tion in which moral wrongdoing is inescapable.
Thinking this, I looked to see what moral philosophers had to say on the
subject. It turned out that most of them had little to say, except perhaps to note
in passing that inescapable wrongdoing was impossible. Yet there were a few
who believed it was possible, that in fact it was sometimes actual; and their argu-
ments were starting to attract some critical response. This was the beginning of
what has become a rather substantial literature on "moral dilemmas." I have
profited a great deal by reflecting on this literature, and in many respects this
book is a product of these reflections.
My principal purpose is to defend the thesis that there is a significant sense
viii Preface
in which moral wrongdoing is sometimes inescapable. But I also argue that a
certain kind of moral conflict is not possible. I have learned that, as a result, I am
interpreted by some as supporting those who think there are moral dilemmas,
and by others as opposing this view and substituting for it a substantially weaker
position. My intention is much closer to the first interpretation. Moral delibera-
tion in a familiar sense aims to decide, from a moral point of view, what to do.
The sense in which moral conflict is not possible is roughly this: It cannot be the
case that the correct conclusion of moral deliberation is to decide to do one
thing and to decide to do another, knowing that one cannot do both. This
would mean that the Salvation Army shelter might be correct in deciding to
accept the donation and at the same time in deciding to refuse it. As a conclu-
sion of moral deliberation (indeed of any deliberation about what to do), this
would be incoherent. I doubt that proponents of the idea of moral dilemmas
have generally meant to deny this. Insofar as this is true, I do not disagree with
them. On the other hand, it does sometimes appear that the moral dilemmas
debate concerns the possibility of conflicting conclusions of moral deliberation
in this sense. My point in identifying and arguing against these conflicts is to
undermine this appearance and shift attention to the real issue.
The real issue concerns the possibility of conflicts in which moral wrongdo-
ing is inescapable. These conflicts do not require that there be conflicting con-
clusions of moral deliberation. This point has been obscured by the fact that
conflicting deliberative conclusions would be sufficient for inescapable wrong-
doing in an obvious sense. What needs to be recognized is that they are not nec-
essary for inescapable wrongdoing in a sense which matters greatly to
us—namely, that whatever we do we will transgress a genuine moral value. I
argue that, though deliberative conclusions may not conflict, there are conflicts
in which infringement of a genuine moral value is unavoidable. The shelter may
have no choice but to violate its moral responsibility to the indigents of the
neighborhood or to violate its moral responsibility to the innocents who stand
to be harmed by the unjust use of the weapons of the arms manufacturer. I
believe this position is close to what most proponents of the idea of moral
dilemmas have had in mind.
Though my primary aim is to argue for this position, my secondary purpose
is to direct the discussion of moral dilemmas in certain directions. In this regard,
there are several themes of my argument worth emphasizing.
First, it is often supposed that the key issue turns on the possibility and
interpretation of moral conflicts in which neither side is morally stronger than
the other. In my view, the emphasis on these conflicts is misplaced. What is
important is whether or not there are moral conflicts in which wrongdoing is
inescapable, even if one moral reason is stronger than the other. The Salvation
Army shelter may have a morally better choice. Yet it could still be the case that
each choice violates a moral responsibility. Once this is recognized, it becomes
apparent that moral dilemmas are potentially a more pervasive phenomenon
than is often believed.
Second, it is sometimes thought that the debate about moral dilemmas is
primarily a metaethical issue, concerned with questions of consistency and
Preface IX
deontic logic. These questions are indeed important. In the final analysis, how-
ever, the problem of inescapable moral wrongdoing is as much a normative issue
as it is a metaethical one. To a large extent, philosophical opposition to the idea
of inescapable wrongdoing is rooted in utilitarian and Kantian perspectives. For
this reason, I examine closely the views of Mill and Kant as well as those of their
followers, and I develop a substantially different normative outlook to support
my position. On my account, we have moral responsibilities to particular per-
sons in virtue of our appreciation of the intrinsic and unique value of each of
these persons, and of our connections with them. I argue that when we think of
our responsibilities in this way, we have reason to believe that they sometimes
conflict and that it is wrong to violate them even when they do conflict. By con-
trast, in both the utilitarian and Kantian traditions, a conception of morality
predominates that at once eliminates genuine moral conflict and tends to dis-
place particular persons as direct objects of moral concern. These traditions suc-
ceed in eliminating conflict only at the cost of an inadequate understanding of
the way in which particular persons are valuable to us. We cannot resolve the
question of inescapable wrongdoing without confronting these fundamental
issues in normative ethics.
Third, insofar as it is recognized that normative issues are at stake in the
moral dilemmas debate, it is often supposed that what is important is whether or
not there is a plurality of kinds of moral values. Proponents and opponents of
the idea of moral dilemmas are seen as basing their positions on pluralism and
monism respectively. For the most part, my account sidesteps this way of under-
standing the debate. Though my sympathies are with the pluralists, my argu-
ment for inescapable moral wrongdoing does not directly depend on pluralism
in this sense. What is required is that we have a plurality of responsibilities to
persons; there need not be a plurality of kinds of responsibilities.
Finally, much of the debate about moral dilemmas has involved tacit
assumptions about the proper methodology of moral philosophy, with little
explicit awareness of the crucial role of these assumptions, much less an attempt
at their defense. I devote a chapter to this subject, drawing especially on recent
methodological discussions apropos Hare and Rawls, both to show the impor-
tance of methodology for the moral dilemmas debate and to develop the
methodology that governs my own argument.
In the course of developing these ideas in some preliminary papers and in
this book, I have received much helpful advice from many people. For construc-
tive philosophical criticism and suggestions, I would especially like to thank
Jonathan Adler, Jeffrey Blustein, Earl Conee, Vincent M. Cooke, S.J., Timothy
Gould, Brian Leftow, Terrance McConnell, James McGrath, Mike Morris,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Dave Solomon, Michael Stocker, Peter Vallentyne,
Margaret Urban Walker, and Michael Zimmerman. I have also benefited a great
deal from the thoughtful responses of two anonymous referees for Oxford Uni-
versity Press, members of the audience at various conferences at which these
ideas were first presented, and the graduate and undergraduate students in sev-
eral of my moral philosophy classes in recent years. I would also like to thank
Angela Blackburn and Robert Dilworth of Oxford University Press for their
