moral dilemmas and relationships

North American Philosophical Publications

Moral Dilemmas and RelationshipsAuthor(s): James KellenbergerSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 309-328Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441303 .

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Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 15, Number 4, October 2001

MORAL DILEMMAS AND RELATIONSHIPS

James Kellenberger

ABSTRACT: Moral dilemmas, understood as moral-conflict situations that entail inescapable wrongdoing, pose an issue for ethics. There are strong intuitive reasons for saying both that there are and that there are not moral dilemmas in this strong sense. I present the case made by Bernard Williams and Christopher Gowans that moral dilemmas exist, and I ex- amine Gowans's and David Mallock's attempts to resolve the tension in our thinking about moral dilemmas. Relationships between persons and their moral requirements, I try to show, going beyond Gowans and Mallock, explain why there are moral dilemmas. Relationships also can be shown to underlie and account for Gowans's moral category of responsibilities to persons and Mallock's categories, including those of status duty and contractual obligations. While relationships allow us to understand the existence of moral dilemmas and why one course is the morally better course, if one is, at the same time, relationships address and allow us to understand what is right in the intuitive reasons against moral dilemmas. Finally, the account of moral dilemmas provided by relationships shows us how pervasive moral dilemmas may be in our moral lives.

I

me begin with a sketch of a simple moral situation. Say that I have a commitment to the university where I am employed and to my

colleagues to attend a committee meeting on a Friday evening. I say I will be there. Later my daughter tells me that she needs a ride to her school dance and only I am available to drive her and her friends. When I tell her I can't drive her, she tries to hide her disappointment, but she does not fully succeed.

309



310 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

What is this an example of? It is not unnatural to say that it is an example of a moral dilemma. I am presented with a choice between two alternatives, each of which carries in its train something that I wish I could avoid. It is a moral dilemma, furthermore, because the two alternatives are moral alternatives; each, we may say, embodies an obligation, one an obligation to my university and my colleagues, the other a parent's obligation to his child. It is distinguishable from a simple conflict between my duty to my colleagues and my desire to avoid a taxing, even frustrating, meeting, as it is distinguishable from a choice between in- dulging two competing personal values on a Friday evening, such as watching Casablanca and reading the next several chapters in Lucky Jim, where, arguably, no wrongdoing attaches to either course. And it looks to be distinguishable from a moral quandary where I cannot dis- cern the right course of action, perhaps because I am unenlightened or because it is truly indeterminate what the right course is.

However, while my example may be of a moral dilemma in a popular sense, some will say that it is not yet clear whether it is a moral dilemma in the true or strong sense. We face a moral dilemma in the strong sense when we have a moral choice before us and whatever course we choose we cannot escape wrongdoing and emerge blameless. The example with which I began would be a moral dilemma in this strong sense if I would be blameworthy if I missed the university meeting and blameworthy if I did not drive my daughter and her friends to the dance. It would not be a moral dilemma in the strong sense if in doing what I ought to do - which, let us say, is to attend the meeting - I am not blameworthy for any wrong in not driving my daughter and her friends to the dance. From now on I shall use "moral dilemma" simpliciter to refer to moral dilemmas in this strong sense. With this much said the issue that has exercised quite a few may be simply put: Are there moral dilemmas? Are there or are there not moral situations from which it is not possible to emerge blameless?1 As with a number of deep-rooted philosophical issues - such as the issue between moral relativism and its denial within philosophical ethics - there is something to be said for both sides on this issue.

Pulling us toward a denial of the existence of moral dilemmas is a concern with the coherence of morality and moral reasoning. In one form this concern manifests itself as a distinctly theoretical concern. If there are moral dilemmas, then we must renounce the ideal of having a general principle (or a hierarchy of principles) that would entail, or "objectively" determine irrespective of the person making the moral judgment, a consistent set of correct judgments telling us in every moral situation which action is the blameless and right action for any person



MORAL DILEMMAS AND RELATIONSHIPS 3 1 1

in that situation. The existence of moral dilemmas would require ethical theories offering a general principle designed to pick out every right action to have a principle that would pick out some actions that are both morally right and morally wrong, and that we both ought and ought not to perform. The existence of moral dilemmas would make such theories incoherent from their own perspective in that they would tell us that we ought to perform both of two mutually exclusive actions, for we would be doing wrong not to do either. But moreover, setting aside such con- cerns with theory, the point of any moral reflection on the right course of action seems to be challenged. By allowing moral dilemmas, we seem to introduce not just uncertainty about what we ought to do but a radical indeterminacy or even arbitrariness into morality and moral reflection.

On the other side, pulling us toward the recognition of moral dilemmas, is a respect for the actual complexity of our moral lives. Let us return again to my initial example of a parent faced with a choice between attending a university meeting and driving his daughter and her friends to the school dance. His considered judgment is that he must go to the meeting, as he said he would (where, let us imagine, the tenure of a colleague is to be decided), and consequently that he will have to disappoint his daughter. Still, might he not be bothered by his decision and, more to the point, feel that he should apologize to his daughter for not driving her to the dance and even feel that he should ask her for- giveness. How can this be unless his not driving her to the dance was wrong, or at least that he has the sense that what he did was wrong despite his careful deliberation about what he should do? It seems unfeeling and insensitive to the subtleties of our moral feelings and the full demands of our moral responsibilities, to say that it is just a mis- take or irrational for him to want to apologize.

Any who seek finally to set this issue at rest, it seems to me, must deal with these conflicting intuitions. I believe that those who have best thought about this issue have approached the resolution of the tension between these intuitions.

II

Among those who have recognized moral dilemmas are Bernard Wil- liams and Christopher Gowans. Williams refers to "moral conflicts" that are not all "soluble without remainder," and Gowans refers to "moral remainders" in moral situations that require us to choose between moral courses of action and to pursue one at the cost of the other.2 Williams observes "if I am convinced that I acted for the best" it is false that "reactions [of self-reproach and regret] are a bad thing," that "regrets"



3 1 2 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

must be "irrational," or that an agent who has them is "less admirable than one who does not." Agamemnon at Aulis provides Williams with an illustration. Agamemnon, after sacrificing his daughter to enable the fleet to sail, Williams reflects, "may have said 'May it be well,' but he is neither convincing nor convinced."3 His father's self-reproach and regret for what he has done, Williams wants us to see, are understandable and hardly detract from his being "rational" or an "admirable moral agent."

The chief moral category Williams uses is "regret," and this has drawn attention. "Regret," it seems, need not operate as a moral term. One who wishes that something had never happened may regret its happen- ing without assuming any responsibility for it, and one who wishes that she had never said the thing she said may not assume moral responsibility for any wrongdoing. Nixon, as I recall, "regretted" the Watergate break-in, but he did not mean to express remorse for wrongdoing. At other times, though, in expressing our regret for what we did we do mean to express remorse and a sense of our wrongdoing. In this way regret seems to be a broad category, which in some applications, but not in all, implies moral responsibility for wrongdoing. Others reflecting on the idea of inescapable wrongdoing have used the terms "guilt" and "remorse." Gowans observes that there "is very little agreement . . . about the meaning and reference of these various terms" and settles on "morally distressed" or, alternatively, "morally disturbed," by which he means the feeling people have when they feel "some measure of mental pain in response to the recognition that they have done something morally wrong."4 What is necessary for there to be moral dilemmas in the sense before us is that there are moral situations in which there is inescapable wrongdoing and from which one cannot emerge blameless (one cannot escape doing some wrong and furthermore will be blameworthy for it). If one recognizes that one was in a moral dilemma, then one will recognize that he or she did something morally wrong and so feel blameworthy or, as Gowans says, feel "moral distress." If one does not recognize that one was in a moral dilemma, then, though the feeling of moral distress would be appropriate, he or she may not have that feeling. Since a similar comment can be made for central meanings of feelings of "guilt," "remorse," and what we may call "moral regret," I will utilize these more familiar terms as well as Gowans's.

Like Williams, Gowans allows that there are moral dilemmas. He argues that "in [moral] situations where an agent cannot do both [of two competing acts] A and B ... the correct conclusion of moral deliberation could not be that both OA and OB [that is, that the agent both ought to do the first and ought to do the second]." Nevertheless, he affirms, "in some of these situations an agent would do something morally wrong no matter what he or she did." Gowans calls this position



MORAL DILEMMAS AND RELATIONSHIPS 313

"the Remainders Thesis," for "it maintains that deliberation may leave a 'moral remainder' that renders an action morally wrong, in some sense, even if performing the action fulfills what is required by the deliberative conclusion in that situation."5

Ill

Sometimes moral dilemmas are called "tragic dilemmas."6 Williams, appropriately enough, speaks of "tragic situations" in connection with his discussion of Agamemnon, and in his discussion Williams brings out the tragic dimensions of Agamemnon's choice. He observes how "[t]he agonies that a man will experience after acting in full consciousness of such a situation are not to be traced to a persistent doubt that he may not have chosen the better thing; but, for instance, to a clear conviction that he has not done the better thing because there was no better thing to be done." Alternatively, he may be convinced that he did the better thing - Agamemnon acted in accord with his responsibilities as com- mander in ordering the death of Iphigenia - but even so, Williams points out, he may lie awake at night, and in this case "he lies awake, not because of a doubt, but because of a certainty."7

Kierkegaard also presents Agamemnon as being in a tragic ethical conflict. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard contrasts the "knight of faith" with the ethical hero or "tragic hero," and one of his illustrations of a tragic hero is Agamemnon. Agamemnon is tragic because he must sacrifice his daughter, and he is a hero because in sacrificing Iphigenia for the sake of the Greek cause he acts as his "higher" ethical duty requires him to act. His sorrow is great, but his moral purpose is firm. In Kierkegaard's cameo, Agamemnon has enviable moral courage and general approval and is, indeed, justified within "the ethical." Williams may accept this Kierkegaardian rendering of Agamemnon as a "tragic hero," but if we read Kierkegaard as saying that because Agamemnon answered his higher ethical duty he did no wrong to Iphigenia, and had no reasonable moral regrets, as we may, Williams would demur.8

Another example of an apparent moral dilemma that has tragic dimensions, often discussed, and referred to as a "moral tragedy," is the dilemma facing Captain Vere in Melville's Billy Budd, Foretopman. Vere in deciding whether to sentence Billy Budd to death must, in David Mallock's words, decide between his "private conscience and moral principles," which would show leniency toward the essentially virtuous Billy, and his "duty as a King's officer" to carry out the punishment for strik- ing a superior officer and to forestall mutiny.9 Sophie's choice, from William Styron's novel of that title, provides another example of a tragic dilemma. When Sophie arrives at a Nazi concentration camp with her




children she is made to choose which of the two will die to avoid both being murdered. She can save one of her two children from being killed only by making a choice between the two.

Moral dilemmas may be moral tragedies, but they need not be, even if those special moral dilemmas that are also moral tragedies make it clear how rending and horrific moral dilemmas can be. The existence of moral dilemmas that are also tragic dilemmas shows us that the issue is not limited to quotidian morality or to comparatively inconsequen- tial moral decisions, but the basic issue of the inescapability of wrongdoing and blame is there for less dramatic moral dilemmas as well. Just how widespread and prevalent moral dilemmas may be we shall see before we are through.

IV

There are some who endeavor to "do justice to the facts of regret," in Williams's phrase, but, as well, try to do justice to the moral possibility of finding in cases of moral conflict a moral way out. Two such efforts to resolve the tension in our thinking regarding moral dilemmas invite our particular attention: that of Christopher Gowans and that of David Mallock.

Gowans attempts to resolve the tension by bringing out what is right on each side of the moral dilemmas issue. He argues that "wrongdoing in the sense of transgressing deliberative conclusions cannot be inescapable" and that, accordingly, "the intuition that wrongdoing can always be avoided may be preserved." On this side of the issue, he argues that if we act in accord with our moral deliberation we will never fail to do what we ought to do, for moral deliberation will never tell us in a conflict situation that we ought to do one of the competing acts and that we also ought to do the other competing act; rather, Gowans holds, in conflict cases deliberation will tell us that it is not the case we ought to do the first of two competing acts and it is not the case we ought to do the second, and that we ought to do either the first or the second of the two competing acts. Yet, he says, on the other side of the issue, "the apparently contrary intuition, that wrongdoing sometimes is inescapable, should also be retained, for there is a sense of 'moral wrongdoing' for which this intuition is correct."10 As we have seen, Gowans advances "the Remainders Thesis," which states that "deliberation may leave a 'moral remainder' that renders an action morally wrong, in some sense." Thus in conflict cases we can do all that we ought to do and not suffer the moral failure of not doing something that we ought to have done, but also there is a moral remainder of wrongdoing. In this way Gowans




finds that "the intuition that there are no 'moral dilemmas'" and the "intuition that there are 'moral dilemmas'" are both "sound" in their respective senses.11

There are moral dilemmas for Gowans because there may be a "moral remainder" in conflict cases and so inescapable wrongdoing in "some sense." Just what does this "some sense" come to? The answer Gowans offers to this question utilizes his category of "responsibilities to persons." Though we may act in accord with our moral deliberation and do all that we ought, still there is the possibility that we will violate "responsibilities to persons" and so do what is, in a sense, wrong. Gowans uses two primary examples of conflict cases to illustrate his category of responsibilities to persons. One is the example of Craig's moral choice. The situation is this:

Craig was hiking in a remote area with a friend, who was not an experienced hiker. They became separated, and Craig, while search- ing for his friend, fell and broke his arm. Though exhausted, he keeps moving and reaches a clearing where there is a road. He is too tired to keep going. After some hours, as the evening comes on, a car drives up. Two teenage girls get out. They are laughing and drink- ing beer. When Craig tries to explain his predicament, they become alarmed. They refuse to help and head back toward the car, getting ready to drive off. Craig realizes that if he acts quickly he can grab the car keys from the one girl and use the car to get help for his friend and himself.

Gowans tells the story in more detail, but this much is enough for our

purposes.12 Craig is faced with a choice: he can let himself and his friend "en-

dure the potentially life-threatening danger of remaining in the wilderness" or he can "forcibly tak[e] the keys from the teenage girls in order to steal their car and get help." He has two "responsibilities," Gowans wants us to see: first, to help his friend in this perhaps life-

threatening situation and, second, not to steal the girls' car. Moreover, for Gowans, "There is no reason to suppose that determining what is

morally best in this situation will establish that Craig was mistaken in

thinking that he has both of these responsibilities." Whatever he does, Gowans concludes, will thus violate some responsibility that he has, cause him moral distress, and result in wrongdoing in the sense of vio-

lating a responsibility.13 "Wrongdoing," for Gowans, "inescapable or otherwise, always in-

volves a violation of a moral responsibility to some particular person, social entity, or what have you."14 For Gowans, then, violating responsibilities to particular persons, or to a "social entity or what have you"




accounts for - and gives us Gowans's sense in which there is - inescapable wrongdoing.

V

Mallock also addresses the tension in our thinking about moral dilemmas and offers us his own explanation of them. Important for his thinking is our distinguishing among various kinds of moral "considerations." In the first place we ought to distinguish between "duty" and "obligation." Mallock observes that "'Duty' has become synonymous with 'the morally right course'." But, he suggests, there is "another and rather humbler use of the term," and in this other sense duties "arise out of one's role or status." In this sense of "duty" we have duties as "soldiers, professors, parents, or priests" and so on. Mallock calls these "status duties" and says that "a duty in this sense is not simply equiva- lent to what one ought to do." For instance, to use Mallock's example, a soldier may have a status duty to fire on a mob but "doubt whether performing his duty would be morally right."15

Obligations should be understood differently, Mallock suggests. Obli- gations are more clearly represented when they are understood as arising from "contractual situations," that is, from "one's own actions and sometimes the actions of others." For this distinction between duties and obligations Mallock acknowledges his debt to E. J. Lemmon.16 Lemmon allows that one may incur an obligation by one's own "committing actions," as when one makes a promise or signs an I.O.U., or by the actions of other, as when one incurs an "obligation to return hospitality having received it."17 Obligations, on this understanding, would arise from enter- ing an agreement or making a promise, but not from some status one has.

Besides duties (or status duties) and obligations (or contractual obligations), there are for Mallock other types of moral considerations. There are moral principles that one might hold, such as the principle (or moral rule) "that one ought not to harm another person." And, in addition, there are "virtuefs] or personal excellence[s] that one values," "ideal [s] one has," and, finally, whether "an action is prompted by love, affection, or sympathy."18 Each type of moral consideration is distinguishable, and each provides its own kind of moral reason for performing an action. As a moral consideration of a certain type may conflict with another consideration of that type (as when one status duty conflicts with another) so may a moral consideration of one type come into conflict with a moral consideration of another type (as when a status duty conflicts with an ideal). When there is a conflict, Ross is right, Mallock allows, that there are no general rules for deciding which is the "better




course." "It will depend upon a variety of things," Mallock says, "many of which rest upon the values and conventions of the society in which one lives while others are embedded in the agent's very personal scale of values."19

For Mallock, then, obligations, but not obligations alone, give us a moral reason for acting, and it may be that an ideal, say, provides a weightier moral reason than does a competing obligation. Consequently, as Mallock sees it, the "non-fulfillment of an obligation ... is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of wrong-doing or moral failure." He provides an example in which it is not wrong not to keep an obligation: A has promised to take B out to dinner, but on the way A encounters a sick man. There would be, Mallock suggests, "general agreement that it would be right to help the sick man rather than to fulfill the obligation to B." Here, for Mallock, it is not wrong not to keep the obligation to B, and he concludes that "Non-fulfilment of an obligation is not necessarily wrong . . . ." But, he goes on to say, "it usually gives rise to trailing obligations. ..." A trailing obligation, in the case of A and B, would be A's obligation to apologize to B and to explain the circumstances, and not fulfilling this trailing obligation can be wrong.20 In this way Mallock offers an explanation of how not keeping an obligation may itself not be wrong but carry in its train a further obligation, the nonfulfillment of which would itself be wrong. In the kind of conflict case illustrated by his example of A and B, then, as Mallock sees it, moral wrongdoing can be escaped: in the offered case, A escapes wrongdoing by helping the sick man he encounters and later apologizing to B.

There is a difficulty in Mallock's account of this kind of case, however. Gowans draws it to our attention. If there is no wrongdoing attaching to A's not meeting B as was promised, why is an apology to B required? Apology for what was done, or not done, implies a wrongdoing or at least that the one making the apology believes there is a wrong to be apologized for.21 1 shall return to this point about the appropriateness of apology.

Mallock goes on to consider other sorts of moral dilemmas. One, which he calls a "moral tragedy," and which I mentioned earlier, is the dilemma facing Captain Vere in Melville's story. As I noted, for Mallock, Vere must decide between his "private conscience and moral principles," on the one hand, and his "duty as a King's officer" on the other hand. For Mallock, we can say now, in this case there is a conflict between two types of moral considerations. What we should note here is Mallock's final comment on this case. He says: "Moral failure presupposes that the agent was in a position to avoid the wrong he did; here he [Vere]




was not, save in the unhelpful sense that he could have taken the other, but equally wrong course. Indeed it is a wrong only in the most formal sense. . . ."22 In this kind of moral dilemma, for Mallock, wrongdoing is not unequivocally escaped, for there is wrongdoing - if only in "the most formal sense."

VI

As I remarked, we have conflicting intuitions about the existence of moral dilemmas. If we admit moral dilemmas, then, because each competing course of action in a moral-dilemma situation will involve wrongdoing, the point of moral reflection on the right course of action seems to be challenged. On the opposing side, it seems unfeeling and insensitive to the subtleties of our moral feelings and the full demands of our moral responsibilities, to deny that there are moral dilemmas.

The best way to address these conflicting intuitions, I believe, is through reflection on relationships between persons and their moral requirements. The category of relationships is not itself a purely moral category (like, say, moral rightness and virtue) but it connects to moral Tightness and moral wrongness in ways that will allow us to approach a resolution of the tension between the conflicting intuitions about moral dilemmas.

Familiar relationships are marital relationships, relationships between friends, the parent/child relationship, the relationship between employee and employer, the relationship between one professional colleague and another, and the relationship entered when one makes a promise. There are many other relationships between persons of course, including those that involve several or even many persons, but these examples will do for illustrative purposes. In these cases we can easily call to mind what in general terms is required by the relationship and what would violate the relationship. Straightforwardly, marital relationships require marital fidelity, and friendships require loyalty. This much is uncontroversial, although what will count as complete fidelity or full loyalty in specific relationships may be a much more difficult question. Nevertheless these brief and general observations about relationships and their requirements are enough for us to recognize a connection between certain relationships and moral obligation. In the case of martial relationships, we can observe that when one violates a marital relationship by not being faithful an obligation is not kept: a moral duty arising from the relationship is violated. Similar comments hold for the other illustrative examples. In the case of these familiar relationships when we violate a relationship we violate an obligation.

Having seen this much, we can begin to see how relationships explain the existence of moral dilemmas. When we do as one relationship




requires by keeping an obligation arising from that relationship we may violate another relationship by failing to meet an obligation arising from the requirements of that other relationship. To revert again to the example in my opening paragraph, if I attend the meeting at my university, as I said I would, and so meet the requirements of my relationship to my colleagues and of the relationship I entered when I made a promise to them, I will let down my daughter and so fail to meet the requirements of my relationship to her. It is this failure on my part that makes it appropriate for me to apologize to my daughter, even if I have a greater obligation, or responsibility, to my colleagues. In this way the violation of a relationship, or not fully living up to the demands of a relationship, accounts for the moral appropriateness of apologizing for what was not done in a moral-dilemma situation - so far quite in accord with what Gowans draws to our attention.

VII

Relationships take us beyond Gowans's account in several ways. For one thing, they provide us with an underlying explanation of what Gowans calls "responsibilities to persons," the category he uses to account for the existence of moral dilemmas. Recall the case of Craig. Craig, in Gowans's presentation, is faced with a difficult choice: he can let himself and his friend remain out overnight in the wilderness or he can snatch the keys from the teenage girls, steal their car, and go to get help. He has two "responsibilities to persons": his responsibility to his friend to protect him, and his responsibility to the girls not to steal their car. What explains and even creates his "responsibility" in each case is a relationship. His relationship to his friend requires his loyalty and his looking out for the welfare of his friend. His relationship to the girls, one of his relationships to them that is prominent in this moral situation, though not the only one, is the relationship that he has to them as owners of their car. This relationship requires Craig to respect the girls' right to their property, in this case their car. For Gowans, if Craig comes to a decision in his moral dilemma, he will fail to keep one moral responsibility or the other. He will do so, we can observe, because in this situation he will violate or not live up to one relationship or the other.

Gowans allows that Craig may do what is "morally best," but even so he will not wholly escape doing what is wrong.23 Again, going beyond Gowans's account, we may appeal to relationships to explain why one course is the morally best. One course would be best if in following it Craig respected the relationship with the more demanding and exigent requirements. While Craig would not avoid violating a relationship in




respecting the more demanding relationship, he would avoid the more serious violation of a relationship.

When Craig does what is morally best but fails to meet a moral responsibility, Gowans would say that he did something wrong, but Gowans would not say that he failed to do as he ought. Moral deliberation, for Gowans, will tell Craig that he ought to keep one moral responsibility or the other, but it will also tell him that it is not the case that he ought to keep the one and it is not the case that he ought to keep the other. This means that for Gowans generally in moral-dilemma situations moral deliberation cannot bring us to the judgment that we ought to follow the course that we see to be morally best, and for the same reason, for Gowans, moral deliberation cannot bring us to the judgment that we ought not to follow the course that is not best. I think that this curious and counterintuitive implication can be avoided.

In the light of the moral requirements of relationships that I have identified, we can say that when we are in a moral-dilemma situation we are faced with two competing obligations arising from two competing relationships, and, we can observe, moral deliberation can tell us that we ought to fulfill each obligation. However, since we cannot fulfill both, the question arises "Which obligation ought we to keep?" This question is not answered by repeating the observation that we ought to fulfill each. Rather, this question asks which of the competing obligations takes precedence over the other. One obligation may take precedence, and if one does, it is because it arises from a relationship with more demanding and exigent requirements. That one relationship is more exigent in its demands, so that meeting its demands is the greater obligation, can be discovered by moral reflection. Though Gowans's Craig case is in fact fairly complex, we can understand that Craig's friendship relationship would be more seriously violated if he did not take the keys to the girls' car than his relationship to the girls would be violated by his taking the keys, and that moral deliberation could discover this. In such a case the practically significant question "Which obligation ought we to keep?" is answered and we discover both what is morally best and what we ought to do, their being one and the same thing.24 And our moral deliberation simultaneously allows us to judge that if we had violated the more demanding relationship we would have done what we ought not to have done. Such intuitive judgments of moral deliberation are naturally allowed by relationships.

Still, it seems to me that Gowans does well not to count what we "ought" to do as the underlying moral consideration. Similarly, as we have seen, various duties or obligations, such as the obligations of friendship, and "responsibilities" in Gowans's sense, are not the underlying




moral consideration. Rather, it is strongly indicated that relationships determine these categories, just as they explain what the best course may be in a conflict situation and how there can be wrongdoing even when we do what is morally best.

Moreover, when what we ought to do, our moral duty and obligation, or our "moral responsibilities," are not "to a person" but to groups or collectives, still the requirements of relationships determine what they are. Gowans says that wrongdoing "always involves a violation of a moral responsibility," but the moral responsibility may not be to "some particular person," it may be to a "social entity, or what have you." It should be noted that Gowans recognizes the importance of relationships of a close sort. He says, "Intimate relationships . . . are the paradig- matic location of moral responsibilities, as I understand them."25 But there is also a role for relationships when the moral responsibility - or obligation or duty - is to a group or collective. In referring to "[i]ntimate relationships" Gowans has in mind his example of Jennifer and her relationship to her son John, as one of the examples he uses to explore his category of responsibilities to persons. In a tough urban setting Jenni- fer has raised and cared for her son. John, who has a temper hard to control, has attacked a man and got away undetected. Jennifer's choice is between keeping her responsibility to the community by reporting her son's criminal act, and keeping her responsibility to her son by not reporting it (for she knows his sense of being betrayed would alter their relationship forever).26 Clearly Jennifer has a close and intimate relationship with her son, but responsibilities also arise from relationships that are not intimate, as in Gowans's Craig case, where the girls are "not acquaintances," and in the Jennifer case itself where one responsibility is to "her community" (to which she also has a "relationship," Gowans allows).27 So the source or "location" of moral responsibilities is not limited to close relationships.

Earlier I cited Craig's relationship to the girls as owners of their car; but another relationship that Craig has to the girls with the car explains what Gowans sees about "basic responsibilities to them which are owed to any human being. ... As persons with intrinsic and unique value, they do not deserve such treatment. . . ."28 In fact, tracing through Gowans's point, no persons deserve such treatment, and all persons deserve some consideration by us by virtue of being persons; we have "basic responsibilities" to all persons. What is the source of these basic responsibilities? As with other responsibilities and obligations the source is a relationship, I suggest. We have these basic responsibilities by virtue of our relationship to all persons, which we have not because of family relations or because we have met them in some situation or entered a




relationship to them by making a promise to them, but by virtue of our being related to them as persons with the value of persons. When we fail to treat a person as she or he deserves, or persons as they deserve, it is not merely that we have failed to respect an abstract principle, "Treat persons as they deserve." Our moral failing is that we have failed to treat those persons as persons. The personal nature of this moral failing is explained by its being a violation of our fundamental relationship to those persons, which obtains simply by virtue of their being persons.29 Gowans says in the passage I quoted that wrongdoing "always involves a violation of a moral responsibility," but that it may be to a "social entity, or what have you." While the "social entity" may be one's society, the "what have you" may be any group, from a circle of friends, to fellow colleagues, one's club, one's political party, one's compatriots - or one's fellow human beings in the world.

By appealing to his categories of "responsibilities to persons" and "moral responsibilities" Gowans helps us see that what we "ought" to do is not the entire moral story or the most basic moral consideration. However, his categories do not have the explanatory power within morality that relationships do. For relationships explain responsibilities to persons and moral responsibilities, and not the other way around. Thus the marital relationship explains marital responsibilities - the responsibilities of faithfulness and respect appropriate to marriage, and the form they take in a particular marital relationship, and not the other way around. One way we can see the underlying role of relationships in moral reflection in conflict situations is by examining the way effects have relevance to decisions in moral-dilemma situations. What our moral reflection needs as we try to determine the best course and to understand the extent of our wrongdoing in a moral-dilemma situation is not reflection on effects per se, or even on harm done, but on effects and harm done in the light of relationships. Thus, as I reflect on whether I should drive my daughter and her friends to the dance, I should appre- ciate that the pain or harm I might cause to someone else's daughter by not driving her and her friends to the dance, even when in so doing I fail to keep a promise, is distinguishable from that I may occasion by failing to drive my own daughter to her dance. Not by virtue of the depth of hurt felt (which conceivably could be the same) but by virtue of the different relationships that prevail. While the chagrin I may cause my colleagues if I fail to attend the university meeting may be greater than the hurt I may cause my daughter if I do not drive her to the dance, the character of the relationships - in this case their relative intimacy - can make the lesser hurt the greater violation of a relationship. Only if the chagrin I would cause my colleagues by not attending the university




meeting is a greater violation of my relationship to them does that chagrin begin to weigh more than the hurt I would cause my daughter.

VIII

Let me now apply relationships to Mallock's moral categories. Mallock addresses moral dilemmas by distinguishing among several kinds of "moral considerations": status duties, contractual obligations, and more. Status duties are associated with the status or role one has. Mallock mentions soldiers, professors, parents, and priests as examples of those with distinct duties arising from their status. We might just as well, and even better, say that persons in these roles have the duties they do by virtue of the relationships they are in. They all may have duties tied to their status or role, but many if not all of their status duties are precisely to those with whom they share the relevant relationship. Professors have special duties as professors to their students and, in another relationship, to their colleagues; parents have special duties to their children.

Taking the obligation to keep a promise as a prime example of what Mallock calls a "contractual obligation," we should observe that it in a clear way arises from the relationship one individual enters with another when he or she makes a promise to that person. The same can be said of other examples of this type of incurred obligation, such as Lemmon's examples of signing an I.O.U. and accepting someone's hospitality.

The other "moral considerations" identified by Mallock - principles, virtues, ideals, and the demands of love, affection, or sympathy - also come down to relationships or may be understood in terms of relationships, although I confess this is harder to see in at least some cases. While I cannot here make a full case for relationships being fundamental to Mallock's moral categories, I will comment briefly on each of these "considerations." Mallock's example of a moral principle is "one ought not to harm another person." This familiar moral principle is not unrelated to what Gowans observes about "basic responsibilities . . . which are owed to any human being. ... As persons with intrinsic and unique value, they [the girls in his Craig example, but by extension all persons] do not deserve such treatment. . . ." As Gowans's basic responsibilities owed to any human being are accounted for by the relationship persons have to all persons simply by virtue of their being persons, so is the moral principle Mallock cites. Regarding virtue, the virtue of honesty, for instance, is not a virtue or moral excellence in a vacuum. It is a virtue because it helps to define the relationship that one has to others and is in fact a requirement of that general relationship. However, full honesty requires being honest with oneself, and in this dimension




one's relationship to oneself (roughly, one's self-respect) may well require the virtue of honesty. Again, realizing or trying to realize one's ideals can be a matter of self-respect or honoring what one owes to oneself. And, finally, whether an action is prompted by love, affection, or sympathy can become morally significant precisely because of the demands of certain relationships: it can make all the difference in, say, a marital relationship whether the gift is given, or the words are spo- ken, with affection.30

To the extent that Mallock's categories are understandable in terms of relationships, his analysis of moral conflict cases as involving different kinds of moral considerations - status duties, contractual obligations, ideals, and so on - is itself understandable in terms of the conflicting demands of relationships. And his conclusion that there are no general rules for deciding which course of action is the better course in conflict situations is exactly right, given that in such cases we are faced with the conflicting demands of competing relationships.

IX

If I am right, relationships account for there being moral dilemmas and explain how in doing what is morally best in a moral-dilemma situation we may nevertheless be blameworthy for wrongdoing. In this way relationships explain one side of our conflicting intuitions about the existence of moral dilemmas. What of the opposing intuition that moral dilemmas would challenge the point of moral reflection on the right course of action? How do relationships help us to understand the con- tinuing integrity and point of moral reflection if they allow that each of two conflicting courses of action will involve us in wrongdoing?

Though there be moral dilemmas, it will still be, or may still be, that one course is worse than the other or the others; and relationships can help us to understand how this is so. The greater wrong occurs with the greater or more serious violation of a relationship. We can speak of doing what is wrong and of committing a greater wrong than another individual has committed in a way that we cannot speak of doing or committing a greater right. We can speak of a more demanding duty, or of what is "more of a duty," as W. D. Ross does.31 But this seems to be an obverted way of speaking of greater and lesser wrongs in that to fail to do the greater duty would be a greater wrong than failing to do the lesser duty. It is true that we can speak of gradations in moral Tightness in an indirect way. We can speak of the morally better thing to do and of the morally best thing to do; thus when Mill says "that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness," we can at least




understand him.32 And of course we apply terms of gradation to other positive moral terms, as when we speak of great or little generosity. However, it remains that it is natural to speak of a great wrong being committed while it is not natural, and a solecism, to speak of a great or greater right being done. Given that we easily and naturally speak of greater and lesser wrongs, we can see our way out of our distress over moral dilemmas: yes, we cannot escape a moral dilemma blameless, but we can escape being blameworthy for doing the greater wrong. We can escape blameworthiness for more seriously violating a relationship, as we would have done if we had chosen the other course and more seriously violated the other relationship.

Moral deliberation retains its point as the reflective means by which we can come to understand the comparative exigency of the competing relationships between which we must choose in a moral-conflict situation. One needs to reflect on the demands and the depth of the demands of the competing relationships, perhaps by reflecting on the history of those particular relationships and almost certainly by reflecting on the understood expectations of those particular persons to whom one is related in those particular relationships. As I reflect on whether I should drive my daughter and her friends to the dance or attend the university meeting, I need to consider, not the effects simpliciter of my choosing one course or the other, but the hurt I would cause my daughter in the light of the specific relationship I have to her if I did not drive her to the dance, and I need to consider the consternation I would cause my colleagues in the light of the requirements of the relationships I have to them if I did not attend the meeting. My reflections might yield a very clear result. I may come to see that the clearly right course is to attend the meeting (if, say, the career of a colleague is at stake and I can with my daughter's understanding arrange a ride for her and her friends with a family member she likes), or that the clearly right course is to drive my daughter to the dance, (if, say, my not driving her myself would deeply affect the closeness of our relationship, and the university meeting is pro forma), or my reflections may be inconclusive if the case is indeterminate (which is possible). However, the point of my moral deliberation remains in place, as the point of moral deliberation remains in place in moral-dilemma situations generally, where the focus of moral consideration is not merely effects, or even harm done, but effects and harm done to those to whom we have various relationships with their different demands. What we see here holds for my example and other quotidian moral dilemmas, as well as for tragic dilemmas such as that involved in Sophie's choice and that faced by Captain Vere, for all present us with the conflicting demands of competing relationships.




On the analysis I am offering, moral dilemmas may be more com- mon in our moral lives than we might suspect: we may constantly be faced with a choice between fully living up to one or another relationship. In order to meet the requirements of one relationship more fully we may have to fail more than we would otherwise to meet the requirements of other relationships. The violation of our relationships - our not living up to their full demands - may be unavoidable. As we strive to keep the demands of our marital relationship we fail to do all that our relationship to our parents requires; as we do all that we can to meet the requirements of our relationship to our children we find our- selves slighting the requirements of our relationship to our employer; as we do as much as we can to fulfill our relationship to our colleagues, we discover that we have been lax in giving attention to what our general relationship to others in the world requires from us in relieving their hunger and helping to bring justice to their plight.

Still, even though moral dilemmas may be ubiquitous in this way, our moral lives are more than a series of blameworthy failings. While the matrices of competing relationships allow that the right course in a moral-dilemma setting may at times be indeterminate, many other times the right course may be determinable and even clear. Thus many times it may be clear what we ought to do in a moral-dilemma situation. In one such setting it may be clear that I ought to attend the university meeting where a colleague's professional future will be decided, while in another such setting it may be just as clear that respecting my relationship to my daughter is morally more demanding and I ought to drive my daughter and her friends to the school dance. If on the one hand we constantly violate relationships in a blameworthy way, on the other hand we constantly have the opportunity to respect the requirements of our relationships.

California State University, Northridge

NOTES

1. The issue of moral dilemmas has been addressed by several moral phi- losophers. They include David Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 45 (1967); Bernard Williams in his often cited paper "Ethical Consistency," in Problems of the Self (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Martha Nussbaum, The Fra- gility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Christopher Gowans, "Moral Dilemmas and Prescriptivism," American Philosophical Quar- terly, vol. 26 (1989) and Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable




Wrongdoing (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Alasdair Maclntyre, "Moral Dilemmas," Philosophy and Phénoménologie al Research, vol. 50, suppl. (1990); Alan Donagan, "Moral Dilemmas, Genuine and Spurious: A Comparative Anatomy," Ethics, vol. 104 (1993); W. A. Hart, "Nussbaum, Kant and Conflicts Between Duties," Philosophy, vol. 73 (1998); Todd Bernard Weber, "Tragic Dilemmas and the Priority of the Moral," The Journal of Ethics, vol. 3 (1999); and Dirk Baltzly, "Moral Dilemmas are not a Local Issue," Philosophy, vol. 75 (2000).

2. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 179; Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp. 88 ff. In his discussion of W. D. Ross, Williams also refers to "residual obligations," p. 176.

3. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 173.

4. Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp 95-7.

5. Gowans, Innocence Lost, p. 88.

6. Weber, "Tragic Dilemmas and the Priority of the Moral."

7. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 173. Williams refers to Aeschylus's Agamemnon.

8. S0ren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling with Repetition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 57-9. Kierkegaard quotes Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis. (We may want to say there really is no moral dilemma here, for Agamemnon has no moral reason to sacrifice Iphigenia. He should not have sacrificed Iphigenia and the world would have been spared one war. However, let us bracket this judgment for the task at hand.)

9. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," pp. 176-7. Gowans has a lengthy discussion of this "moral tragedy," Innocence Lost, pp. 3-22.


11. Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp. 49, 66 ff., 84-5.



14. Gowans, Innocence Lost, p. 146 (Gowans's emphasis). 15. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," pp. 164-6.

16. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," pp. 166-7. Mallock cites E. J. Lemmon's "Moral Dilemmas," The Philosophical Review, vol. 71, (1962), p. 142.

17. Lemmon, "Moral Dilemmas," p. 141.

18. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," p. 167. Mallock indicates that Lemmon cites moral principles as a type of moral consideration (as he does: Lemmon, pp. 139-40, 142). The last three considerations Mallock himself brings forward.

19. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," pp. 167 and 170.




20. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," p. 168. 21. Gowans, Innocence Lost, p. 112. 22. Mallock, "Moral Dilemmas and Moral Failure," pp. 177-8. 23. Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp. 137-9. 24. In some cases it may be that the requirements of the two competing

relationships are equally demanding and exigent, and the obligations to which they give rise are equally pressing, as in Sophie's choice. In such a case the answer to the question "Which obligation ought we to keep?" is not "this one" or "that one," but "one or the other." And if, with trepidation, we keep one obligation or the other, we do what is morally best and what we ought, for keeping neither is morally worse and what we ought not to do.

In other cases it may be that we cannot determine which relationship has the more demanding and exigent requirements, or it may even be truly indeterminate. In these cases moral deliberation will not tell us which course is morally better. While such cases may be more prevalent in our moral lives than we would like to contemplate, this being so still allows that there are many cases where moral deliberation can identify the morally best course of action by discovering which of our relationships has the more demanding and exigent requirements.

25. Gowans, Innocence Lost, p. 122. 26. Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp. 98-9. 27. Gowans, Innocence Lost, pp. 134 and 135. 28. Gowans, Innocence Lost, p. 134. 29. In Relationship Morality (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995) I

call this relationship the "person/person relationship" and discuss its many moral implications.

30. For a fuller discussion of how moral principles, virtues, ideals, and "in- terior" states or attitudes like love or sympathy are morally involved in relationships I refer the reader to Relationship Morality, especially chaps. 4, 8, and 9.

31. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (1930; reprint, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1988), p. 18.

32. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), p. 7.



moral dilemmas and relationships

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