• You say here that the larger difficulty is being morally dissociative and without autonomy. What if one does not morally dissociate? Then wouldn't moral complicity become a problem? Or are you taking the more hardline position that if one has to ask the question, then clearly one has not learned how to avoid moral dissociation yet? (Since if one had learned to avoid dissociation, one would not even be contemplating doing something that would require dissociation.)

"...five years ago, these “scams” were perfectly legal and it probably never even crossed the minds of most associates at those law firms that they are contributing to the financial crisis today....how are we even supposed to know whether our works are immoral or not?" I think it would be fairly clear, if not immediately, then certainly after you worked in your industry for a few months. I've had several jobs over nine years, and it's definitely easy to learn the skeletons in the closets of the places you work. I remember a friend who works at Morgan Stanley telling me in early 2004 that these mortgage-backed securities were going to be a disaster for the economy and that a lot of people had been flat-out tricked into buying houses with mortgages they could never repay.

-- AmandaBell - 04 Feb 2010

It sounds to me that you are assuming there are three mutually exclusive regions which are labeled morally good, morally neutral, and morally wrong. If that’s true, then how do you draw the lines to distinguish such regions and who should be the judge? I feel like morality is a sliding scale; one end is really good, one end is really bad, and most of the activities that people do in the society concentrate somewhere in the middle. Before we question the morality of the law firm associates who contributed to the current financial crisis, I think it is important to note that we are judging them based on the outcome which has occurred. While a person is performing an act, such as an associate working in a law firm, his priority is to further his client’s best interest without violating the law. Is it immoral for the banks and law firms to be resourceful and to pursue their best interests for financial wealth? We call it immoral now because millions of people were scammed and lost them home, but five years ago, these “scams” were perfectly legal and it probably never even crossed the minds of most associates at those law firms that they are contributing to the financial crisis today. I feel that even after we start working at law firms, it is difficult to see whether our actions are immoral or not without a high probability of knowing the consequence of our actions. So, my question is that before asking whether we are morally complicit with our work, how are we even supposed to know whether our works are immoral or not?

-- RyanSong - 04 Feb 2010

On the morally neutral question:

I don't think that every potential employer can be classified as morally good or morally bad, as if there is some sort of justice scale on which their "good" (recycling program) and "bad" (criminal defense) parts can be weighed, which leads me to believe that the great majority are nothing but morally neutral.

-- AerinMiller - 04 Feb 2010

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Perhaps you misunderstood. Moral complicity is the smaller part of your worries, because you have already learned how to dissociate from immoral behavior undertaken for personal advantage, or you wouldn't be taking the position you're now taking. Your larger difficulty is being morally dissociative and without autonomy.

Taking your law firm down from inside? Perhaps you really don't know that's arrant nonsense. You think your obligations to your clients are optional? You think your law firm doesn't know how to destroy you completely if you decide, without any basis in the actual law of lawyering, that your obligations to your client are subject to your personal moral sentiments once you engage? Please stop posturing and get real.

Of course there are such times. So?