MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR SHAZAM! #1:
Today's Shazam! #1 features the wizard Shazam's daughter, Blaze, who wants Freedy Freeman's powers for herself, and so battles Freddy, currently the world's mightiest mortal, Captain Marvel Shazam (thank you Judd Winick) along with the depowered Billy and Mary Batson. As she is about to be defeated, Blaze says to Freddie:
Our father... the gods... the creator... they all left me in the dark. Do you know what that's like? Of course not. Because their light still shines within you.
Now imagine an eternity without that light. Without love. Compassion. Or hope.
That's what hell is, Freddie Freeman.
Under those circumstances, who's to say you would've turned out any different from me?
It mat be a familiar riff on "there but for the grace of God go I"--in reverse, of course, and with a different beat--but it is also a topic much discussed by philosophers in the form of moral luck.
As it is often put, how can you hold a person (or half-wizard/half-demon) responsible for her actions to the extent they were caused by factors beyond her control, such as her genetics and upbringing, which as far as she's concerned are matters of luck. After all, as children we don't choose to whom we are born, where or how we are raised, and so forth. It is very noble to think we can rise above all adversity and develop magnificent characters despite material and emotional deprivation, but is that reasonable--and should a person be held responsible for failing to do this?
Simply put, how can we hold persons responsible for choices they make, when those choices were to some extent influenced by choices made for them in the past? We don't want to hold persons responsible for things done to them, so how can we hold them responsible for their choices if they are not completely their choices? (You may have noticed that this is similar to the general problem of free will and determinism: how can a person be held responsible for her actions if all worldly phenomena are explained by the laws of physics?)
There is no simple answer, of course. If you're interested, the most famous modern treatment of moral luck is Bernard Williams' Moral Luck
; see also Thomas Nagel's "Moral Luck" in his book Mortal Questions
, as well as Daniel Statman's edited book on the topic (creatively titled Moral Luck
).
By the way, Kant wrote memorably of this general theme in his book Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
in the context of being proud of one's own morality:
[People] may ... picture themselves as meritorious, feeling themselves guilty of no such offenses as they see others burdened with; nor do they ever inquire whether good luck should not have the credit, or whether by reason of the case of mind which they could discover, if they only would, in their own inmost nature, they would not have practiced similar vices, had not inability, temperament, training, and circumstances of time and place which serve to tempt one (matters which are not imputable), kept them out of the way of those vices. This dishonesty, by which we humbug ourselves and which thwarts the establishing of a true moral disposition in us, extends itself outwardly also to falsehood and deception of others. If this is not to be termed wickedness, it at least deserves the name of worthlessness, and is an element in the radical evil of human nature, which (inasmuch as it puts out of tune the moral capacity to judge what a man is to be taken for, and renders wholly uncertain both internal and external attribution of responsiblity) constitutes the foul taint in our race. (pp. 33-34)
