One reason Eben gave for not working at a firm was that firms do morally undesirable work, and that in working for a firm, one's work would actively be contributing to that overall morally undesirable work product. For example, if one was a big-firm lawyer over the past five years or so, one most likely actively contributed to the financial crisis by providing the legal work for allowing grossly unchecked mortgage-backed securities to be created and flipped for fast profit.

My question: Is it true in every job, you are always morally complicit in the work of the company? Note than an answer of yes would mean that when you work for an organization that actively does good, you are also actively doing good. Is there ever any way to dissociate oneself morally from the work of the company in which one participates?

More interestingly, is there any line of work that could be considered morally neutral? (For example, serving as a public defender, in which one is merely performing a necessary societal role, such that when one works to actively get a murderer off the hook, it is not viewed as morally wrong in any way.)

-- ChristopherCrismanCox - 03 Feb 2010

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Perhaps you misunderstood. Moral complicity is the smaller part of your worries, because you have already learned how to dissociate from immoral behavior undertaken for personal advantage, or you wouldn't be taking the position you're now taking. Your larger difficulty is being morally dissociative and without autonomy.

Added a comment box. Hope you don't mind bud.

My first response is that you're not always morally complicit in the work of an organization of which you are a part, because there's always the option of acting contrary to the organization while you're in it. "Taking the man down from the inside," if you will. I know that's not really what you're asking, Chris, but it leads me to a tangential question of my own.

Taking your law firm down from inside? Perhaps you really don't know that's arrant nonsense. You think your obligations to your clients are optional? You think your law firm doesn't know how to destroy you completely if you decide, without any basis in the actual law of lawyering, that your obligations to your client are subject to your personal moral sentiments once you engage? Please stop posturing and get real.

If we accept the notion that joining a firm is pawning one's license, might there ever be a time when you'd actually WANT to do so, for the supplementary benefits that would come along with it? Say you wanted to work in an industry and you wanted to provide justice and social benefit within that industry. Might it be beneficial in working for a firm that does a lot of work in that industry as a sandbox before bursting into the world after a few years to create moral good?

Of course there are such times. So?

-- AndrewCascini - 04 Feb 2010