ABSTRACT
Kai Nielsen argues that '[w]e make our own history, as Marx said, but not under conditions of our own choosing'. He sides with the compatibilists in the Free will/ determinism debate – arguing that we are the products of a 'genetic and social roulette'. However, whereas most compatibilists believe that no revision is required regarding our understandings of moral responsibility and desert, he believes that we should revise these understandings. The grounds for condemning 'moral monsters' such as Hitler are pragmatic. Hitler's life, like everyone else's, was a product of 'genetic and social roulette', but we should still have aimed to punish him for what he did, although we should aim at inflicting the minimal amount of suffering necessary for reasons of deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation. Arguably the dominant and most persuasive method for both explaining and justifying moral and normative political beliefs, commitments and whole accounts of morality is the method of wide reflective equilibrium.
