We’re Off the Hook: Morality Doesn’t Demand Perfection

The distinction can be made between that which the agent is capable of, and that which the agent is aware that he/she is capable of.  For example, suppose it is true that a particular college student would be capable of ending world hunger, but only by leaving school and beginning work in Nigeria immediately.  Naturally, no reasonable person would suggest (not knowing for sure what the outcome would be) that under normal circumstances, this college student ought to drop out of college and go to work, for little or no pay (and now, no completion of a formal education), in Africa.

Our natural inclination on this matter is correct: it is unreasonable to expect an agent to take an action that would not seem likely, based on the agent’s knowledge of the situation and due logical rigor, to lead to the best result overall (“due intellectual rigor” means simply the application of such logic as is necessary to reach an adequately grounded decision within the time and other constraints forced by the situation itself).  It would be the most reasonable for the student to believe that more good (and more right) would result if he/she finished his/her studies and then moved on, better educated, to fixing the world’s problems – and that is the most morally appropriate action (the situationally rightest action) for that student to take, despite the fact that it is not the universally rightest action.  Thus, it is not morally required that an agent always take the universally rightest action.
Plausible Objections:

To begin with, this argument is fairly agreeable to most people: few believe that morality actually does require perfection.  However, the purpose of this essay has been, not simply to provide support for this widely held viewpoint, but to prove it.  As such:

One objection to this argument might come in the application of what might be perceived as a consequentialist idea (that of the “rightest action”) to all moral systems, including those which are not consequentialist in nature.  However, the reader will note that I have taken great pains to use only the word “right,” and not good, in describing the comparative moral values of actions.  By doing so, and defining the comparison in such terms, the argument holds – even in such non-consequentialist systems as virtue theory there are some actions that are more or less right, even if this only means a spectrum.

A further objection to this argument might come from the use of the term “universal” in regards to the rightness of action.  Many people don’t believe that this can be defined in any meaningful way, and still others believe that this sort of “universal” rightness doesn’t even exist.  I will simply point out that both of these objections will lead to my conclusion anyway – since it follows that one cannot be required to perform some action that is not defined and/or does not exist.