This paper is a non-utilitarian ethical defense of the people of Omelas. In Ursula K. LeGuin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” the considerable happiness of the city of Omelas depends entirely on the abject suffering of one child. While many are willing to live with these terms, others refuse, and walk away. Rather than reading the story as a critique of utilitarianism (which equates ethics with producing the greatest good for the greatest number), or as a Kantian defense of those who reject the happiness of Omelas “on principle,” I will defend the “character” (ethos) of those who remain in Omelas from the perspective of the agent-centered virtue tradition of ethics. While this tradition is not without its own shortcomings, the virtue approach acknowledges the importance of human dependence and social context to the moral life. When compared with the possibilities for those who would leave Omelas, and their attempt to ground their happiness/flourishing on their own individualistic efforts, the ones who remain in Omelas have created a society which, while not perfect, enables people to live genuinely good lives in the full knowledge of and acceptance of the burdens of such a life. The paper will first explore the variety of ethical possibilities for those who would leave Omelas, and find them either seriously wanting or impossible. With these alternatives in mind, the paper will then defend those who remain (or perhaps even return—a possibility LeGuin neither raises nor rules out), giving special attention to their deeper understanding of the inherent limits of their own freedom in creating and living an ethical life.
About the presenterPaul Firenze
Paul Firenze is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where he teaches courses in philosophy, religion, and science and technology.