(In progress; I intend to edit later; includes sentence fragments that trail off)
A moral aphorism often encountered is the notion that “actions have consequences.” While some actions do indeed have consequences, I argue that the consequences of actions is not the primary building block for understanding moral obligation. In response to the proposed framework that actions have consequences, I suggest a more constructive framework is “States have implications, and actions may or may not contribute to a change of state.”
Our moral obligations are entirely a product of our state of being, and not of the path that lead to that state. Countervailing against that however, our habits are very very much an integral part of our state of being, and our actions do contribute to those habits.
On the one hand, I really am arguing that our actions have no direct moral consequences. On the other hand, our actions have immense indirect moral consequences, because our actions create habits, attitudes, abilities, and so forth, which have superlative moral consequence.
From a moral perspective, I honestly think the question “what have you done?” is all but irrelevant, except to the extent that it impacts the answer to the question “what do you do?”
Path-based morality says that you acquire certain particular moral obligations to specific people by the details of your birth, and that various other actions over the course of a lifetime create other particular moral obligations. Additionally, if you wrong someone, you have a moral obligation to make it right, and our moral obligations are prioritized based on the claims they each have on us because of our past conduct. State-based morality says that if you have the capacity to improve the state of the world, you have a moral obligation to improve it. Our moral obligations are prioritized based on the need for the improvement and how particularly we are situated to be uniquely able to offer that improvement, where improvement is, as always, defined as progress toward a state of universal thriving ("life, and have it abundantly").
Creatures who are capable of actions that can change the state of the world for the better have an obligation to do so
I am less interested in “whose actions caused the state of the universe to be as it is” and more interested in “who has the capacity now to make the universe better?”
I believe our obligations to act to better the state of the universe are not the consequences of our past actions, but rather the result of our capacity to do good.
According to the “actions have consequences” framework, past actions create a hierarchy of whose thriving is morally prioritized. Those who act virtuously deserve to thrive, and their virtuous conduct creates a moral responsibility to others to act for their thriving. Those who act unvirtuously do not deserve to thrive, and actions to promote their thriving are deprioritized, or even morally prohibited. In this realm, justice involves people getting the outcomes they deserve. Justice is the process of calling people to account for their moral responsibilities.
Now I would agree that justice is indeed when creatures are called to account for meeting their moral responsibilities. But rather than believing that past actions create moral responsibilities, I believe that current states of being create moral responsibilities.
Your moral responsibility is to do the most good, given the state in which you find yourself.
The past cannot be changed, so moral responsibility always begins anew from the current state and always points from the current hellish conditions toward apocatastasis
Our habits are a big part of our current state
God’s will is for the restoration of all creatures to a state of thriving.
None of our actions can change God’s desire for our thriving. Thus, no one can forfeit a place in that end state of thriving.
The problem with “actions have consequences” is that it suggests that because of our actions, some creatures deserve to thrive and others do not. Or at least that some creatures’ thriving is prioritized over other creatures’ thriving. But the divine expectation is apocatastasis, which leaves no room for exclusion: we do not have divine authorization to write off anyone as being undeserving of restoration to a state of thriving.
But states have consequences: if the current state of creation is hellish, such that many creatures are not thriving, all creatures have a moral responsibility to act to change the state of creation so that mutual thriving can happen. And if a creature, in its current state, has the tendency to prevent other creatures from thriving, that must be changed. Any creature’s actions cannot put said creature outside the plan of restoration, but many many actions make that process of restoration much longer and more difficult! This apocatastasis is not a universalism of “I’m okay; you’re okay.” I am most certainly not okay in my current state, and neither are you. And to the extent that I in my current state and you in your current state are apt to engage in actions that inhibit the thriving of other creatures, we are not fit to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven in our current state, and must be transformed in order to have a place in the new creation.
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The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of paradise: a state of mutual thriving for all creatures. God’s will is for apocatastasis: the restoration of all creatures to that state of mutual thriving. Our current hellish state is one in which many creatures are apt to act in ways that prevent the thriving of other creatures. God’s will is to bring about a new creation, a new state of being in which the creatures of the old creation all participate but restored to right order, such that they contribute to rather than prevent each other’s abundant life. Because God’s will is for the restoration of all creatures to a state of thriving, none of our actions can change God’s desire for our thriving. Thus, no one can forfeit a place in that end state of paradise.
The problem with a paradigm that proclaims that “actions have consequences” is that it suggests that because of our actions, some creatures deserve to thrive and others do not, or at least that some creatures’ thriving is prioritized over other creatures’ thriving on the basis of their past actions. But the divine expectation is apocatastasis, which leaves no room for exclusion: we do not have divine authorization to write off anyone as being undeserving of restoration to a state of thriving.
But states have consequences: if the current state of creation is hellish, such that many creatures are not thriving, all creatures have a moral responsibility to act to change the state of creation so that mutual thriving can happen. And if a creature, in its current state, has the tendency to prevent other creatures from thriving, that must be changed. Any creature’s actions cannot put said creature outside the plan of restoration, but many many actions make that process of restoration much longer and more difficult! This apocatastasis is not a universalism of “I’m okay; you’re okay.” I am most certainly not okay in my current state, and neither are you. And to the extent that I in my current state and you in your current state are apt to engage in actions that inhibit the thriving of other creatures, we are not fit to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven in our current state, and must be transformed in order to have a place in the new creation.
In a non-apocatastasis-based ethic, justice seems to involve the consequences of one’s actions, such that
Someone's propensity for bad conduct give us a moral obligation to disempower such a person, but in no way lessens our mora obligation to seek such a person's wellbeing
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