How Are We To Make Good Moral Choices and Do What Is Morally Good?

Abstract

Every day each of us has to decide what we are going to do; we are faced with choices. Should I, on coming to a stop light showing yellow, drive through the intersection if I am in a hurry to meet an important person in a company I want to work for? If I am filling out my income tax or expense report for my employer, should I “pad” it by claiming thirty charitable contributions under $50.00 for my tax report—they do not require written proof—and by claiming as business expenses meals and car rentals that were primarily for personal—not business—use even though one of ten meals was with a business client? To choose the morally good alternative and carry it out in act we need a criterion to distinguish morally good from morally bad alternatives of choice. We can exclude different types of consequentialism such as utilitarianism because consequentialism in all its forms holds as morally good those actions that bring about more benefits for people than would an alternative choice, irrespective of the means elected to produce the benefit. Their motto is “The most good for the most number of people,” even if this choice necessarily includes bringing harm, even death, on a smaller number of people. Consequentialists of all stripes (i.e., act and rule utilitarians, proportionalists, etc.) forget, however, that human acts—ones that we freely choose and are not chosen because our heredity and/or environment determines us to choose—not only “get things done,” (i.e., bring about results or consequences), but also—and more importantly—“get things said.” People recognize this because we commonly say that ‘actions speak louder than words.’ Expressed more technically, human acts are self-reflexive, abiding in the agent as dispositions to engage in similar acts of the same kind. We can indeed truly say that we make ourselves to be the kind of persons we are—selfish or self-giving, turned in on ourselves, or receptive of others—in, and through, the deeds we freely choose to do every day. So true is this that we can say that our integral, existential character as moral persons is shaped by our everyday freely chosen deeds, good and bad. We make ourselves to be the persons we are in, and through, the choices, good and bad, we make each day of our lives.