Moral Traces and Relational Autonomy

One feature of James Childress’s approach to ethics is the experience of “moral traces” that agents ought to feel in situations of conflict after they have overridden one strong value for the sake of another.¹ This experience grasps at something intuitive about the moral life, that in situations of intense moral conflict when we are faced with a choice to act in a way that goes against a deeply held value, it is morally important that we feel and respond a certain way. At the most immediate level, this might entail privately mourning or grieving that we had to violate the value. Doing so would affirm that we care about the overridden value, and by acknowledging such a care we would feel that our moral integrity has been protected. But shouldn’t the concept of moral traces entail more than a private process of grief? Shouldn’t it have an effect on our relations with others? Moral traces ought to obligate us to act toward others in certain ways, and in that sense it is a concept quite distinct from the pangs of conscience we feel when we have behaved badly. At the very least, these traces ought to press us to offer an explanation or justification to others for why we acted against an important moral value, especially if those others were affected negatively by our action. In more extreme cases, we might even be compelled to make amends or offer reparations to the one or ones who were harmed by our action.²

In this article I am interested in sorting through the ways that moral traces function in the moral life, especially in terms of the work they do in maintaining and building social and institutional relationships. I want to suggest that moral traces are more than an internal attitude that pertains to individual flourishing; they are also integral to communal well-being. By pointing to a contrast between moral traces as important for individual flourishing and moral traces as conducive to increased communal well-being, I also hope to expand our thinking about the liberal principle of autonomy that is central to Childress’s approach. I am motivated in this article by a worry that some might use the appeal to moral traces to reinforce an individualistic, psychological notion of the self. This is clearly something that Childress does not do, as can be seen in his 1970 Soundings article, “Who Shall Live When Not All Can Live?” There he tethers the equitable distribution of scarce medical resources firmly to the maintenance of relationships of trust. In later writings, he explicitly outlines the obligations to others that emerge in situations when an important value has been overridden. Relationships of trust and the obligations to others incurred by moral traces both point to a conception of agency that is relational.

In what follows, I hope to suggest the broad contours of an account of moral traces that highlights its relational features. Looking at moral traces through a relational lens accentuates, and perhaps even intensifies, the obligations that they incur. Put differently, relational conceptions of autonomy require a more careful account of moral traces—one that focuses on what we owe one another. By a relational conception of autonomy, I mean a view of agency that sees the choices we make as shaped by our relations with and commitment to others. Highlighting moral traces as central to the moral life is a way to recognize the importance of human accountability, which ensures that we are always fully aware of how our actions affect others. Ultimately, the significance of the effect of moral traces does not lie simply in protecting an agent’s integrity or sense of herself as morally whole but rather in how it promotes the building and maintaining of relations.

Annette Baier makes this point eloquently in her critique of Michael Stocker’s account of moral guilt—a concept that, while not exactly synonymous with moral traces, does share a family resemblance. She notes that although Stocker is concerned about the effects of moral dilemmas, his “attention is given to the emotions...