Topics Ethics

Question This is a moral question that came to my mind after some reading of law books, but please take it only as a moral question. Suppose that Mary lent me 100 euros. When the time came that I should pay her back, I didn't do it, although I had the money (I preferred to spend it somewhere else). A friend of ours, Pete, knowing what had happened, gave Mary 100 euros saying that he was paying my debt. She accepted the money from him, and Pete told me what he did. What is my moral duty now? Should I give 100 euros to Mary? Do I still owe her 100 euros? Or do I owe Pete 100 euros, although he acted without my consent?

Accepted:
April 8, 2009

Comments

I'm inclined to make a distinction between two things here: the grammar, as it were, of the word "owe" and the right thing to do.

I think a case can be made for saying that since you weren't a party to Pete's deed and didn't consent to it, then you owe Mary 100 euros, in at least one recognizable sense of "owe." And one can also make the case that you don't "owe" Pete 100 euros, since you didn't enter into any arrangement with him. I'm pretty sure that if we were in the realm of contract law (suppose there actually is a signed note here), this is how it would sort out, though there might be some tricky legal issues that, as an amateur, I'm overlooking.

That said, if I were advising someone in this position, I'd say that at the least, they should pay Pete back. It would be a good thing as well to come clean to Mary. But whatever one thinks the moral obligations are here, we can prise them apart -- to at least some degree -- from strictly legal issue about who owes what to whom.