Trust Your Neighbors

Dalrymple expresses pride in having done the right thing, and engages in some light philosophizing, after damaging a neighbor’s car:

However, to have acted out of fear of capture would have been a dishonorable reason for doing the honorable thing. I am not sure that I believe in the Kantian categorical imperative—in fact, I am almost sure that I don’t—but in a case like this, the decent thing should be done for its own sake rather than from fear of doing the indecent one. Without a number of ad hoc exceptions, a purely consequentialist account of ethics is implausible—as is one that takes no account whatever of consequences.

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