Compromise: What Makes it Bad?. (February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Biggar, Nigel
• Is Part Of: Studies in Christian ethics. Volume 31:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 34
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2018-02
• Subjects: Compromise -- regret -- absolute rules -- Vereeniging -- Yalta -- Good Friday Agreement -- theological ethical method; Christian ethics -- Periodicals; Morale chrétienne -- Périodiques; 241.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0953946817737926
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0953-9468

Abstract

This article considers what makes a compromise bad. First, it defines a compromise as a decision involving a loss of good (i.e., an evil), which should therefore be accompanied by 'agent-regret'. Regret, however, is not moral guilt. Pace proponents of 'dirty hands', a morally right compromise cannot retain elements of moral wrongness (as distinct from non-moral evil). Second, the article proceeds to elaborate the features of bad compromise further in terms of common moral sense: the preference of less rather than more of a single good; the preference of an inferior to a superior good; and the violation of an absolute moral rule. Third, it extends its elaboration in terms of three historical cases: the abandonment of strategic promotion of a good; tactical suspension for insufficient reasons; complicity in indubitable and certain injustice to avoid tolerable costs; and the violation of a basic principle of justice as distinct from normal judicial process. Finally, it adds a methodological epilogue, in which it reflects on whether its treatment of the topic has been sufficiently theological.