Alternatives
Some philosophers, such as Susan Wolf, have tried to come up with "happy mediums" that strike a balance between rejecting moral luck outright and accepting it wholesale. Wolf introduced the notions of rationalist and irrationalist positions as part of such a reconciliation.
The rationalist position, stated simply, is that equal fault deserves equal blame. For example, given two drivers, both of whom failed to check their brakes before driving, one of them runs over a pedestrian as a consequence while the other does not. The rationalist would say that since both of the drivers were equally at fault in failing to check their brakes, it should make no difference that one of them was lucky in not hitting a pedestrian while the other was unlucky – moral fault is independent of consequence. Since the fault here is equal, the agents should respond equally.
The consequentialist position argues that equal fault need not deserve equal blame, as blame should depend on the consequences. By this logic, the lucky driver certainly does not deserve as much blame as the unlucky driver, even though their faults were identical.
Wolf combines these two approaches in trying to reconcile the tensions associated with moral luck by introducing the concept of a virtuous agent. A virtuous agent should accept that he has a special connection with the consequences of his actions, including equal-fault cases (such as the lucky/unlucky drivers above), and even in no-fault cases. This argument essentially retains the rationalist claim that equal fault is equally deserving of blame while also retaining the consequentialist claim that different outcomes should result in moral agents feeling and acting differently.
It is important to underline the distinction between internal and external moral blame or praise. Wolf believes that the outsiders should blame the lucky and unlucky drivers equally despite their intuition that the two of them should not feel equally bad (i.e., the unlucky driver that ran over a pedestrian should feel worse). However, the unlucky driver himself should voluntarily accept the notion of the special connection between his actions and the unfortunate consequences, and assign more blame to himself than the lucky driver should.
Read more about this topic: Moral Luck
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