When we screw up, deflecting attention onto a completely unrelated action utterly misses the point, which is: that we screwed up. Despite their fundamental differences, the philosophical theories we’ve discussed all agree—on like a “this is so obvious we shouldn’t have to say it” level—that each of us is responsible for our own actions. They might differ on the moral accounting we do once we’ve decided to act, but none of them suggests that our actions should be judged based on other people’s actions that have nothing to do with ours.
