Using the case of Cheol-Soo and Min-Soo, discuss whether expressing personal preferences in a moral choice moment can be morally justified under the standard of fairness.
When faced with a moral choice, is it morally justifiable to reveal a personal preference to another person? Moral philosophers have mostly answered this question in the negative, invoking impartiality as a condition for moral justification. From an egalitarian perspective, no one is privileged. People, regardless of race, gender, or age, all have the same value in terms of body, life, well-being, and happiness. Therefore, moral choices that express an actor’s preference for one individual over another can never be justified. Since egalitarians do not recognize discrimination between people, they say that the situation in which an individual finds himself or herself should determine the course of action.
However, we all have special relationships with certain individuals in our lives. When those people are family members, the intimacy and importance of personal relationships is very strong. Is it morally justifiable to express a special personal preference for someone because of a family relationship? Consider the following two examples.
Chulsoo is on duty and receives an urgent call from headquarters. There is an intelligence report that a suspect is attempting to smuggle people into Japan from a port on the east coast and he needs to be arrested. He goes undercover and arrests the suspect, who turns out to be his only brother. After much deliberation, Cheol-soo lets him go and reports to headquarters that he’s lost the suspect.
Min-soo owed two people 50 million won each. One was his uncle and the other was Yeong-soo, a man he knew through business. Coincidentally, both of them had fallen on hard times at the same time and were in urgent need of 50 million won, and anything less would not help them. After realizing this, Min-soo worked hard and managed to come up with 50 million won, and was able to pay off one of them. Min-soo paid off his uncle’s debt.
Is Chul-su’s behavior morally justifiable? Since he knew the suspect was his brother and let him go, his behavior expressed a personal preference for his brother. Therefore, he did not uphold the standard of fairness, which requires that everyone’s welfare and happiness be considered equally. His behavior seems morally unjustifiable.
So, can Minsoo’s behavior be justified? He clearly expressed a personal preference for his uncle. If Minsoo is an egalitarian, he should make a judgment based solely on the circumstances, since the happiness of his uncle and Youngsoo is the same. If Young-su is in a worse situation and his uncle is not, he has no choice but to pay off Young-su’s debt. However, since the circumstances of the uncle and Youngsoo are exactly the same, Minsoo is allowed to make a personal preference.
Hard-line utilitarians would argue that even in moments like this, a die should be rolled to determine whose debt should be paid. This is to completely eliminate personal preferences. Moderate fairists, on the other hand, believe that this argument fails to reflect our natural preferences for individuals, and that we need to make room for them to be taken into account. They call this room for personal preference tolerance. They argue that we can allow for personal preferences only if the contextual conditions are the same.
This discussion is not just theoretical, but also has important real-life implications. In our daily lives, there are countless moments of moral choice, and these choices shape our relationships and moral identity. For example, when parents invest more resources in their children or lend a hand to a friend, we instinctively feel that these choices are morally justified. This comes from our natural human nature, and is an important consideration in relaxing the strict standards of fairness.
Furthermore, the complexity of moral choices is even more pronounced in the modern world. In a globalized world, we interact with people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds, which forces us to reexamine the concept of fairness. While fairness is important as an ideal principle, in real-life situations, personal preferences and situational context need to be taken into account.
In conclusion, expressing personal preferences in moral choices doesn’t always have to be seen as negative. When we consider the importance of situational conditions and human relationships, we can make more balanced moral judgments. This is more than just a theoretical discussion; it is an important issue that has a profound impact on our daily lives and moral behavior.
