Circumstantial luck

On a number of occasions I've proposed counterfactual guilt as a justification for eternal punishment. Here's a striking illustration:

What we do is also limited by the opportunities and choices with which we are faced, and these are largely determined by factors beyond our control. Someone who was an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. And someone who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not left Germany for business reasons in 1930. 

The third category to consider is luck in one's circumstances. I shall mention it briefly. The things we are called upon to do, the moral tests we face, are importantly determined by factors beyond our control. It may be true of someone that in a dangerous situation he would behave in a cowardly or heroic fashion, but if the situation never arises, he will never have the chance to distinguish or disgrace himself in this way, and his moral record will be different.

A conspicuous example of this is political. Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again one is morally at the mercy of fate, and it may seem irrational upon reflection, but our ordinary moral attitudes would be unrecognizable without it. We judge people for what they actually do or fail to do, not just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," Moral Questions (Cambridge 1991). chap. 3.

i) It's a matter of "circumstantial luck" that some people commit atrocities while others lead decent lives. If their situations were reversed, their conduct would be reversed. 

ii) In addition, this often involves circumstances beyond their control. The situation in which they find themselves. They didn't create the situation. 

iii) I don't quite agree with Nagel's conclusion. As a matter of penology, we punish people for what they actually do or fail to do, not for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. That's in part because, unlike God, we lack counterfactual knowledge. In addition, penology is largely practical. About social incentives and disincentives rather than ultimate justice. 

iv) But from the standpoint of eschatological justice, which concerns itself with meting out what people deserve, the considerations are different. It's not so much that they are directly judged by what they might have done or failed to do, but what counterfactual scenarios expose about their character defects.