Topics Ethics

Question When someone sees a wrong in society, they have a choice to act. A wrong could be anything a person deems as an inappropriate action. For example, if you see someone being robbed, you can either walk away, or do something (e.g. try to stop the robber or call the police). That example is pretty clear cut. The robber is breaking the law. But what if the witnessed action isn't against the law? For a second example, if you witness someone acting rude to a passenger on a subway, and maybe that action is saying a racial slur to another passenger. The choice then is to either say something and stand up for what you think is wrong or quietly go back to reading your paper. Some people I've talked to say it's not a choice to act, it's your duty to act. For a third example, a citizen feeling a public official has wronged society (e.g. congress has passed a questionable law). The choice is to say something (e.g. write a letter, make a phone call) or just quietly keep to yourself. The question is, when does a choice to act become a duty to act? When it's just a choice, you can avoid taking action without judgement of others; when it's your duty, other will judge your lack of action poorly. When does your lack of action become judgeable by others?

Accepted:
April 2, 2008

Comments

This question is difficult to answer in general terms because a number of quite different considerations bear on it. The six most important, perhaps, are these:

1. the magnitude of the impending harm

2. the number of people who would share responsibility for the harm if it came about and, for each of the others, their degree of responsibility (While the harm in your case 3 may be quite large, responsibility for it is also shared by many, and this can dilute that responsibility to some extent. When our country is waging an unjust war and kills a million people, each of us citizens surely bears some responsibility for this war, but not to the extent that one would if one had killed a million people single-handedly.)

3. the cost your getting involved can be expected to impose upon yourself (You have no duty to get involved in your cases 1 and 2 if getting involved would involve a serious risk of getting attacked and perhaps killed.)

4. the degree of responsibility you would have for the harm if it occurred (You are responsible to a higher degree in your case 3, where harm is done by your state in your name, and in your case 1, where you fail to stand up for a just law you have endorsed as citizen, than in case 2. Other things being equal, a higher degree of responsibility means that you should be willing to accept greater costs for yourself in order to reduce a given harm. A citizen of the United States, for instance, should be willing to bear greater burdens to stop an unjust war her country is waging than a citizen of Brazil -- even the other factors, and in particular the two persons' capacities to make a diffference, are equal.)

5. the difference your action can be expected to make toward reducing the harm (This is a function both of the total effort required to stop or mitigate the harm and also of the number of others already working toward the same end. There's no need for you to get involved in cases 1 or 2, say, if a dozen others are already dealing with the situation quite successfully. Nor is there reason to get involved if your involvement could not reduce the harm and quite possibly increase it.)

6. the demands that other situations may make on your time and energy (You cannot possibly deal with all the wrongs you can know about; and whether you should (have a duty to) get involved in trying to reduce some particular wrong may then depend on what other wrongs you might be addressing instead. Here these other wrong should also be analyzed under the preceding five headings so that a comprehensive comparison can be made.)

I don't think these (and possibly other) considerations can be woven together into an algorithmic formula that can plausibly guide your decisions in all of the circumstances you have in mind. But they can prepare you to make good and mutually coherent judgments in such situations, or so I believe.