Unchosen action
How a people’s character comes to be constituted raises few important moral questions. A vast majority of evil actions are, in fact, unchosen; they choose not to act in normal ways to live good lives, instead they ‘spontaneously and naturally respond according to habitual patterns ingrained in their characters. The crime is taking the ‘soft’ reaction to evil, based on erroneous choice-morality. The solution taking the ‘hard’ reaction.
Three kinds of moral agents perform evil actions; the people who habitually choose to cause undeserved harm, moral monsters. The second are not so evil because their actions do not come from agent's character, but they are, rather, infrequent and uncharacteristic actions responding to strong provocation, stressful circumstances, or considerable temptation. The agents are symptomatic of being disturbed, overpowered by some strong emotion or unable to think clearly. These agents are acting ’out’ of character.
Legal sanctions and social pressures force most potential moral monsters into hypocrisy or self-deception. Hypocritical moral monsters know what they are doing, but conceal it from others. The self-deceptive moral monster convinces theirself of the truth of an account to put their evil doing in an acceptable moral light. These precede those who bring about ‘unchosen’ evil.
These agents can not do otherwise, their evil is not accidental; they follow their ‘unchosen’ vices symptomatic of enduring dispositions in accordance with vices they’ve developed, but without choosing to develop them.
John Kekes
The Myth of Evil- Philip Coles
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