COMPENSATORY ETHICS—A NEW THEORY OF ETHICS?

COMPENSATORY ETHICS—A NEW THEORY OF ETHICS? The Guardian article (by Kate Connolly) that I linked to earlier says that “According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the ‘licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour’, otherwise known as ‘moral balancing’ or ‘compensatory ethics'”. What interests me about the experiment is not the environmental aspect, but the more general view of human nature. For me, the theory of compensatory ethics suggests a whole new way of thinking about ethics, and a way of thinking that is based on behavior. Traditional ethics is usually prescriptive. Once the right action is identified, you should do the right thing. But what if we live in a world where people allocate a limited stock of virtue? The theory raises a lot of normative questions that make us uncomfortable. (Should we recognize that some people are endowed with larger amounts of virtue than others? Should bad actions be judged more harshly if committed by people by people who are endowed with less virtue or if committed by those who are nicer?) We may deplore the theory, but I think it explains a lot of ethical thinking and behavior as I will discuss in the next couple of posts.