more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Harmful omissions are unavoidable, while most harmful acts can be avoided.
Gist of Idea
Harmful omissions are unavoidable, while most harmful acts can be avoided
Source
Jonathan Glover (Causing Death and Saving Lives [1977], §7.8)
Book Ref
Glover,Jonathan: 'Causing Death and Saving Lives' [Penguin 1982], p.104
A Reaction
This does suggest why we get angry with bad actions, but are very tolerant of omissions. It is also easier to motivate positive actions than to worry about things undone. Omissions can be disgraceful.
| 20869 | The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus] |
| 7404 | Nations are not obliged to help one-another, but are obliged not to harm one another [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| 15824 | There are mere omissions (through ignorance, perhaps), and people can 'commit an omission' [Chisholm] |
| 4692 | It is not true that killing and allowing to die (or acts and omissions) are morally indistinguishable [Foot] |
| 4694 | Making a runaway tram kill one person instead of five is diverting a fatal sequence, not initiating one [Foot] |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| 6479 | Noninterference requires justification as much as interference does [Nagel] |
| 4658 | Acts and Omissions: bad consequences are morally better if they result from an omission rather than an act [Glover] |
| 4659 | It doesn't seem worse to switch off a life-support machine than to forget to switch it on [Glover] |
| 4660 | Harmful omissions are unavoidable, while most harmful acts can be avoided [Glover] |
| 20881 | The act/omission distinction is important for duties, but less so for consequences [LaFollette] |
| 21136 | Utilitarians conflate acts and omissions; causing to drown and failing to save are the same [Shorten] |