One reason Eben gave for not working at a firm was that firms do morally undesirable work, and that in working for a firm, one's work would actively be contributing to that overall morally undesirable work product. For example, if one was a big-firm lawyer over the past five years or so, one most likely actively contributed to the financial crisis by providing the legal work for allowing grossly unchecked mortgage-backed securities to be created and flipped for fast profit.

My question: Is it true in every job, you are always morally complicit in the work of the company? Note than an answer of yes would mean that when you work for an organization that actively does good, you are also actively doing good. Is there ever any way to dissociate oneself morally from the work of the company in which one participates?

More interestingly, is there any line of work that could be considered morally neutral? (For example, serving as a public defender, in which one is merely performing a necessary societal role, such that when one works to actively get a murderer off the hook, it is not viewed as morally wrong in any way.)

-- ChristopherCrismanCox - 03 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.

Added a comment box. Hope you don't mind bud.

My first response is that you're not always morally complicit in the work of an organization of which you are a part, because there's always the option of acting contrary to the organization while you're in it. "Taking the man down from the inside," if you will. I know that's not really what you're asking, Chris, but it leads me to a tangential question of my own.

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.

If we accept the notion that joining a firm is pawning one's license, might there ever be a time when you'd actually WANT to do so, for the supplementary benefits that would come along with it? Say you wanted to work in an industry and you wanted to provide justice and social benefit within that industry. Might it be beneficial in working for a firm that does a lot of work in that industry as a sandbox before bursting into the world after a few years to create moral good?

Of course there are such times. So?

-- AndrewCascini - 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

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