The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 192 of 254
Moral luck under the Third Reich
corollary: the same person, with the same character, if now put into a life where a different range of situations was normal, could have the following cloud: Now the overall description of the exact same person would be ‘mean’, not ‘generous’. What this shows is that there is some contingency as to which descriptions of our characters are true. In other places at other times, a mean person could be generous, a brave one cowardly and so forth. This fits rather than contradicts common experience. Many German citizens, for instance, would have led blameless lives had they not lived under the Third Reich and been placed in situations which brought out their worse selves. Conversely, many people are able to live good, moral lives only because circumstances have not tested them.