Saving a loved one rather than a stranger
Bernard Williams · Moral Luck · 1981
A shipwreck: two people are about to drown, and you can save only one. One is a stranger, the other is your spouse. You rush, of course, toward the one you love. But a philosopher stops you: did you first check that morality permitted it, that no impartial reason gave priority to the stranger? replies that anyone who needs that check already has "one thought too many": she was your spouse, and that should be enough.
You save your loved one, granted. But what, deep down, makes that act good?
What it does in the debate
Objects to Deontologismattacks the position
To check that it is 'permitted' to save the one you love is one thought too many: a morality that routes our attachments through the impartial rule alienates what makes a moral life worth living.
- Your spouse and a stranger are drowning, you can save only one. The morality of duty first has you check that it is permitted to save your own.
- But this check is 'one thought too many': the person who, before the one they love, first asks whether the rule allows it has already failed what the bond requires.
- A morality that requires passing through the impartial rule, even in our most intimate attachments, alienates what makes a moral life worth living: the bonds themselves.
Therefore So the impartiality of duty misses the concrete heart of morality: it is not the rule that commands saving the one you love, it is the bond, and a morality that forgets this asks one thought too many.