10 Moral Paradoxes

Saul Smilansky is a professor in the Department of Philosophy

at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is the author of the widely
acclaimed book Free Will and Illusion (2000) and has published
articles in many of the leading philosophical journals.

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10 Moral Paradoxes
Saul Smilansky

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 2007 by Saul Smilansky

BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1

2007

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

iv

Smilansky, Saul.
10 moral paradoxes / Saul Smilansky.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-6086-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4051-6087-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Ethics. 2. Paradox. I. Title. II. Title: Ten moral paradoxes.
BJ1031.S625 2007
170dc22
2006028203
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality

we must see it on the tightrope. When the Verities become
acrobats we can judge them.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The gods too are fond of a joke.
Aristotle

For Jonathan

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Contents

List of Figures

viii

Acknowledgments

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Introduction

Fortunate Misfortune

11

The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement

23

Two Paradoxes about Justice and the Severity

of Punishment

33

Blackmail: The Solution

42

The Paradox of Non-Punishment

50

On Not Being Sorry about the Morally Bad

59

Choice-Egalitarianism and the Paradox

of the Baseline

67

Morality and Moral Worth

77

The Paradox of Moral Complaint

90

10 Preferring Not to Have Been Born

100

11 A Meta-Paradox: Are Paradoxes Bad?

113

12 Reflections on Moral Paradox

122

Postscript: The Future and Moral Paradox

134

References

138

Index

142
Contents

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List of Figures

2.1 Excellent chance that a replacement for someone

from the professionally worst group will be better
3.1 Disparity between the required severity of
punishment and deserved mitigation
3.2 Some possible levels of punishment
7.1 The world according to choice-egalitarianism

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List of Figures

25
36
39
73

Acknowledgments

Paradox is the poison flower of quietism, the iridescent sheen

of a putrefied mind, the greatest depravity of all.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Since so many people assisted in my pursuit of paradox over the

years, lets hope that Thomas Mann was mistaken. But, in any
case, I am grateful to those who read and commented, at various stages, on this book or on the essays from which it emerged.
I have tried to keep track of this beneficence, and apologize to
anyone whom I might have forgotten.
Many gave me helpful comments on drafts of one or more of
the original papers, or of their rewritten versions. These include
Shlomit Baruch, Dan Bein, Aaron Ben-Zeev, Avner de-Shalit,
David Enoch, Galia Geist, Amihud Gilead, Michael Gross,
Meir Hemmo, David Heyd, Giora Hon, Doug Husak, Hagar
Kahana-Smilansky, Iddo Landau, James Lenman, Kasper LippertRasmussen, Tal Manor, Jeff McMahan, Ariel Meirav, Merav
Mizrahi, Jacob Ross, Simon Rubin, Eli Salzberger, Jonathan
Seglow, Jonathan Smilansky, Daniel Statman, Hillel Steiner, Larry
Temkin, and Eddy Zemach.
I would also like to mention a category of persons who necessarily remain anonymous, an academic version of the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier: the referees for the journals that accepted
my papers and, occasionally, the referees for the unmentionable
Acknowledgments

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journals that rejected papers; such referees (as well as editors)

frequently made good suggestions. I cannot hope to mention all
of the people who gave me comments on my papers after they
had been published. I would, however, like to note with gratitude the extensive discussions I have had with Yuval Cohen (on
Fortunate Misfortune), Patricia Greenspan (on Not Being Sorry),
Mark Sainsbury (on the nature of paradox), Alex Tabarrok (on
Beneficial Retirement), Meshi Uri (on the punishment paradoxes); and with Michael Clark, G. A. Cohen, Nir Eyal, Cecile
Fabre, Meir Hemmo, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, and Hillel
Steiner on a number of the paradoxes each. Some people sent
me papers replying to my paradoxes; of those, papers by James
Lenman, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, and Tal Manor have been
or are about to be published, together with my replies. I obviously appreciate the attention given to my work.
Alon Chasid, Avner de-Shalit, David Enoch, Amihud
Gilead, Michael Gross, Doug Husak, Hagar Kahana-Smilansky,
Menachem Kellner, Iddo Landau, James Lenman, Tal Manor, Jeff
McMahan, Ariel Meirav, Avital Pilpel, Alma Smilansky, Jonathan
Smilansky, Daniel Statman, Simon Wigley, and Nick Zangwill
merit special gratitude for generously reading and giving me
comments on all or most of the manuscript. They have made a
large contribution to the book. Iddo, Hagar, and Danny deserve
further commendation for having done this while having previously read almost every one of the paradoxes as an individual
paper. Surely they carry a particularly large burden of responsibility for any errors that remain.
I have benefited from the opportunity to go over a draft of
this book with my students at the University of Haifa, in classes
during the winter of 2004 and the spring of 2006. I have given
talks about some of these paradoxes to more academic forums
than I can mention here, in Denmark, Israel, Portugal, Turkey,
the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Three of the paradoxes were written, and the project of making this book was conceived and undertaken, during my sabbatical year at Rutgers University in 2003 4. I am thankful for the
hospitality provided by the wonderful philosophy department
Acknowledgments

at Rutgers. I want to note my particular gratitude to a number

of people: to Larry Temkin, for being my sponsor and a most
welcoming host in the department, and for hours of philosophical conversation; to Jeff McMahan, for continuous caring
and thoughtful contributions, both philosophical and nonphilosophical; and to Doug Husak, for many pleasant lunches
spent talking mostly about punishment. Susan Viola, Mercedes
Diaz, Pauline Mitchell, and Matthew Wosniak took care of my
needs in the department and helped to make that year so pleasant
and productive.
I was very fortunate to have had the assistance of Alice Koller
in making the manuscript clearer and better written, and I am
grateful to her for her efforts and good advice. I am grateful to
Anthony Grayling for his generous counsel and encouragement
on publication. Nick Bellorini, the philosophy editor at Blackwell,
was enthusiastic about the project from the very beginning, and
has been an ideal editor since. The two reviewers for Blackwell
were at once sympathetic to the nature of the book and critical
in helpful detail. It was a pleasure to work with Gillian Kane,
Kelvin Matthews, and Valery Rose on the design and production of the book. Alma Smilansky drew the diagrams. Marion
Lupu made the final touches on the manuscript and checked the
proofs.
I shall not begin to describe my gratitude to various friends
who helped in ways related to this book, most of whom are
mentioned here in other capacities; I am sure that they know
who they are and what I feel. I must, however, make an exception for Iddo Landau, who has followed my struggles with the
paradoxes and the book so closely, and has been so helpful and
supportive at every stage. As always, I have been sustained in my
efforts by the love of my mother, Sarah, and of Hagar, Alma,
and Jonathan. To Jonathan, my brother, I dedicate this book.
I gratefully acknowledge here the permission of the editors and
publishers to make use of the following articles: Two apparent
paradoxes about justice and the severity of punishment, Southern
Journal of Philosophy 30 (1992), 1238; Fortunate misfortune,
Acknowledgments

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Ratio 7 (1994), 15363; May we stop worrying about blackmail? Analysis 55 (1995), 11620; Preferring not to have been
born, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1997), 2417;
Blackmail, Encyclopaedia of Ethics, 2nd edn. (London:
Routledge, 2001); Choice-egalitarianism and the paradox of
the baseline, Analysis 63 (2003), 14651; On not being sorry
about the morally bad, Philosophy 80 (2005), 2615; The
paradoxical relationship between morality and moral worth,
Metaphilosophy 36 (2005), 490500; The paradox of beneficial
retirement, Ratio 18 (2005), 3327; and The paradox of
moral complaint, Utilitas 18 (2006), 28490.

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Acknowledgments