Can the morality of an act be judged independently of its cause?
“When civilians are the main target, there's no need to consider the cause. That's terrorism; it's evil.” On the surface, this seems morally intuitive. The intention of which is to harm innocent people creates an instinctive reaction that demands moral condemnation. However, this quote also simplifies a more complex, deeper ethical question to be understood: Can we truly evaluate the morality of an act without considering why it was committed? Across history, politics, and especially philosophy, intention and consequence have remained significant to debates about what makes an act morally good or evil. This essay argues that while actions like targeting civilians are almost always perceived as wrong, judging their morality independently of cause can risk warping ethical reasoning. A morally meaningful assessment must consider not only the outcomes of an action but also its motivations, context, and the broader ethics in which the action takes place.
Judging Moral Action: Consequence and Intention
To judge morality without consideration of cause is to adopt a purely consequentialist approach—one that defines right and wrong in terms of outcomes alone. This position is traditionally explained by John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism, in terms of which the position is stated that actions are moral to the degree that they make people happy and immoral when they result in harm (Mill, 1861), claiming that any action which resulted in harm to non-combatants would be morally wrong regardless of the intentions of the agent. But such a system would consider any action resulting in the harm of civilians to be morally wrong, regardless of the motivations behind it.
Consider, for instance, the difference between a blitz bombing mission by the military, which incidentally kills civilians in targeting a weapons depot, and a terrorist bombing designed to kill civilians deliberately. Each can result in the death of innocents, but our moral intuition categorizes these actions into very different categories. It would be to disregard the intent of the agent, a fundamental aspect of moral judgment, to classify them as equally evil.
It is here where deontology, as best exemplified in Immanuel Kant, offers an alternative.
In Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that morality is in accordance with duty and within the will that is present with the act, and not in its consequences (Kant, 1785). If an action is founded on a moral principle, though causing unforeseen harm, the action is justifiable. Kantian ethics require human beings to be treated as ends in themselves, and not as means to an end. The deliberate targeting of civilians as a means to political objectives is, therefore, by definition, immoral. Collateral damage—if endured in the process of seeking justice or self-defense—can nevertheless be morally distinguished.
Real-Life Cases of Civilian Targeting
Real-life instances only add to the complication.
In World War II, Allied aircraft bombed the German city of Dresden, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed. Some would say that the bombing was necessary to demoralize and destroy Nazi assets; others insist it was terrorism by another name. The same can be said for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although justified by others as a means to bring an end to the war, such actions specifically targeted great masses of civilians. Can they be judged morally independent of the particular circumstances of international war and alleged necessity?
Or consider Nelson Mandela, whose African National Congress once appeared on a list of terrorist organizations for sabotage against apartheid targets. His group intentionally avoided targeting civilians, but at the time, his actions were condemned as political violence. In retrospect, his cause, being racial equality and freedom, shifts the morality of his actions, and he is viewed by many as a moral hero. Mandela's legacy illustrates how temporal distance and context will alter our understanding of morality when cause is being weighed (Time, 2018).
Contemporary resistance movements offer further insights. For instance, Palestinian groups resisting Israeli occupation, Kurdish combatants resisting Turkish oppression, and Ukrainian guerrilla combatants resisting Russian invasion all struggle in morally complex circumstances. When these groups employ violence, especially where civilian harm can be anticipated, should they be evaluated only in terms of outcomes, or should they also have their intentions and limitations considered? Labeling such groups as terrorists is often more for political reasons than for objective moral evaluation.
Moral Absolutism and the Denial of Cause-Based Ethics
Despite such examples, there are some philosophers who believe that the cause of an action is irrelevant if the action per se is objectively immoral. These moral absolutists think that some actions, such as the deliberate targeting of non-combatants, are wrong regardless of the motive or the situation. Such a perspective follows from a belief in absolute moral rules, sometimes connected with religious or natural law thinking.
The appeal of absolutism lies in its simplicity. If civilian targeting is always wrong, then we fight moral relativism or situationist apologies. But such simplicity is perhaps bought at the cost of moral maturity. Philosopher Thomas Nagel, for instance, warns against reducing morality to a set of rules separate from human psychology, motive, or historical context. In his essay War and Massacre, Nagel has argued that not only what we do, but also how and why we do it, is what matters morally (Nagel, 1972).
Absolutism is also helpless in the face of edge cases. Consider the example of a small rebel group, lacking access to traditional weapons, which uses limited violence to stop a dictator from committing genocide. If they bomb a strategic government installation where there are some civilians, is that the moral equivalent of an indiscriminate bombing of a shopping mall? To moral absolutists, possibly. But to most ethical observers, the intent, restraint, and context of the action make all the difference. An ethical tradition that ignores these distinctions risks collapsing all violence into a single category, thereby blurring the moral differences between terrorism, self-defense, and resistance.
Modern Implications: War, Law, and the Ethics of Resistance
In the 21st century, our answer to this question has significant practical implications for warfare, international law, and politics. Contemporary drone warfare, for example, inflicts civilian casualties routinely as a consequence of intelligence mistakes or proximity targeting. If morality is determined irrespective of cause or intention, then states that use drones in self-defense would be no different from terrorist networks that attack schools or hospitals. Such an equivalency would devastate both legal and moral systems, along with undermining the legitimacy of international conventions like the Geneva Conventions.
Furthermore, cause-based evaluation is at the heart of transitional justice processes. Truth and reconciliation commissions, in countries such as South Africa, Rwanda, and Colombia, have succeeded not because they condemned all uses of violence equally, but because they sought to understand motives, histories, and intentions behind the acts. Identifying the cause enables both accountability and moral repair.
Even legal systems recognize cause in distinguishing crimes. The difference between first-degree murder and manslaughter is based precisely on motive and intent. To extend that logic to political violence or acts of war is to suggest that cause must be part of moral judgment.
This is not to imply that any cause justifies violence. Nor is it to minimize the suffering of innocent victims. It is merely to insist that morality must be subtle. If we judge exclusively by the outcome, we risk condemning freedom fighters alongside war criminals, and defensive military operations alongside acts of terrorism.
Conclusion
The question "Can the morality of an act be judged independently of its cause? is not merely academic; it guides how we think about justice, war, resistance, and accountability. While deliberate harm to civilians remains morally indefensible in almost every case, dismissing cause from moral judgment oversimplifies the reality of human conflict. From the ethics of obligation of Kant, the consequentialism of Mill, or the tempered principles of just war theory, ethical examination always reveals that cause, intention, and context matter. To remove them is to strip morality of its nuance, and to risk confusing justice with vengeance. Morality is not facilitated by simplicity. It is facilitated by precision, empathy, and truth.
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