Moral Luck

            The idea of moral luck questions if external conditions outside of ones control, should be used to increase or decrease blame or praise of the individual.  An example of this in my life would be when I was 16 and my friend and I attended a driving education course.  We went to the same classes together and got the same exact education.  We also had the same problem where neither of us knew how to parallel park.  When the time came for the test, we ended up getting different proctors.  I ended up not having to parallel park for the test; my friend on the other hand was not so lucky.  His proctor made him parallel park and because of it he ended up failing.  This is an example of moral luck because we both had the same exact knowledge and training going into it, and it came down to bad luck that he ended up failing.

            While I do believe that moral luck does exist in our lives, I do not believe that it is a serious ethical problem.  Luck is something that is out of our control and can be random; therefore one should not be blamed or praised for this.  We cannot stop these things from happening.  It would not be ethical to blame or praise someone for an action that they cannot control.   In the example I showed I it could have been prevented with no need for luck, had we just learned to Parallel Park in the first place.