Moral Luck, Accounting, and Moral Responsibility without Blame

This chapter aims to address a crucial challenge that might be leveled against the account developed so far: namely that the account appears not only to hold people accountable for outcomes that were out of their control but also, and problematically, to blame them. This chapter argues that while moral responsiblity and blame are often treated as though they are coextensive, it is a mistake to see them that way. Someone can be morally responsible for something without being blameworthy for that thing. But abandoning the idea of blame, at least in our penumbral agency, does not undermine our ability to create meaningful human relationships; nor does it undermine the functioning of many of our social institutions.