Difficult Choices: To Agonize or Not to Agonize?

Edna Ullmann-Margalit Difficult Choices: To Agonize or Not to Agonize? “AGONY OF DOUBT” “W H AT A DIFFICULT CHOICE,” A FRIEND SMILINGLY COMMENTS AS SHE faces the well-endowed dessert counter at a party.' Having heard the traf­ fic report on the radio in the morning, I may find it difficult to choose which route to take, as I learn that all routes to my destination are likely to be congested. A relative tells me that the formal act of signing the final papers committing his aging parent to an institution was one ofthe most difficult choices he experienced. Reflecting on the legal and medical professions, the comment is sometimes heard that in choosing either of them one m ust be prepared to face many difficult choices in one’s profes­ sional career; so, too, with regard to being a politician or a statesman. In the sum m er of 2006, Israel w ent to w ar against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli cabinet, led by the prim e m inister, took the decision to go to w ar w ithin a few hours after a border skirm ish in w hich three soldiers were killed and two soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah. Some two m onths later, after the war ended w ith ambigu­ ous results, pressure m ounted on the Israeli governm ent to appoint a commission of inquiry into the conduct of the war. Prime M inister Ehud Olmert agonized for about two weeks before finally reaching the decision about w hich form at of commission, from a m enu of several options, he was going to approve. social research Vol 74 : No 1 : Spring 2007 51 In w hat follows, I shall be concerned to explore w hat makes choices difficult above and beyond the difficulty o f expected-value calculation. I shall consider a choice difficult to the extent th at it poses a special, noncalculative challenge to the choosing agent, either in virtue of certain characteristics of the choice itself or of the agent facing it. From the point of view of the psychologist, the description of O lm ert’s behavior clearly indicates th at the choice to appoint a state commission of inquiry (rather than, say, a judicial commission) was to the prim e m inister m ore difficult than the choice to go to war. The longer it takes to reach the decision, says the psychologist’s formula, the m ore difficult the choice reveals itself to be. Let us try to m ake sense of O lm ert’s choices, in light of the psychologist’s formula relating the difficulty of the choice directly to the tim e it takes. One possible conclusion from applying the psychol­ ogist’s formula here is that the intuitively suggestive link between the difficulty of the choice and the m om entousness of the outcome should be questioned: even though the choice to go to w ar was clearly the m ore m om entous one, the choice of the form at of inquiry appears to have been the m ore difficult one. Another possible conclusion is that a choice whose outcome is likely directly to affect the agent’s own life and career is more difficult than a choice whose outcome is likely directly to affect the lives of m any people other than the agent’s—even w hen the effect on the lives of the m any m ight be momentous. Yet another way to react to the attem pt to apply the psychologist’s form ula to O lm ert’s case is to say th at O lm ert’s situation shows the formula to be wrong: some difficult choices are made quickly. Rather than the speed of the choice attesting to its nondifficulty, it may attest to some other feature of the choice situation or, som etimes, to the perversity of the agent m aking the choice. We may recognize that the decision about the form at of inquiry took longer for the prim e m inister to m ake than the decision about going to war, but reject the notion that the former is, as such...