Ethics in a Complex World: Why Moral Clarity Is Not Simple

Editors' note: This essay is part of the 2025 Global Ethics Day online exclusive roundtable from Ethics & International Affairs. View the whole collection here.

Ethics in a Complex World: Why Moral Clarity Is Not Simple

There is comfort and power in sharp distinctions between right and wrong positions, victim and oppressor, innocence and guilt. Yet lived experience and careful reflection often frustrate such divisions: many hard moral conflicts present us with multiple compelling demands, values, or harms. To acknowledge this is not to advocate for indifference or resignation, but to adopt an orientation—“moral complexity”—that is unglamorous and often unsatisfying but also indispensable for responsible ethical reasoning. This essay develops and defends this stance, addresses the objection that it invites a paralyzing “bothsidesism,” aligns it with some major themes in philosophical thought, and explores the Israel-Palestine conflict as a case study. At stake is nothing less than the honesty and integrity with which we ought to meet many of the world’s entangled challenges. To the extent that a re-envisioning of ethics should center around its function as a tool for helping make difficult decisions where values, needs, and goals conflict, appreciating moral complexity is an essential step into this direction.

The Case for Moral Complexity

The word “complex” traces to the Latin complectere—“to weave together.” Complexity in moral contexts denotes the interlacing of multiple claims, histories, and values within a single situation. When acknowledging moral complexity, we do not face one simple right answer, but a field of “side-by-side” truths: each with ethical weight, not easily or honestly overridden.

Consider freedom of speech. We must account for the value of open expression, the protection of dignity, and the safeguarding of community trust. In debates about reparations, urgent claims about addressing historical wrongs must be weighed alongside concerns for fairness to the present generation. In cultural and territorial disputes, deeply-held beliefs—religious, historical, or emotional—matter greatly to some but not all participants. We cannot reduce such cases to single variables; we must admit their braided character.

Moral complexity refuses various shortcuts. In the logic of argumentation, it avoids a qualifying and dismissive “but”—it says, instead, “this also matters,” counting multiple demands, values, or harms as worthy of attention. When it comes to the interpretation of events, personalities, or texts, it avoids a grounding in one moment, feature, or textual component and temptations to interpret everything from there. In conflicts that unfold over time, it is not typically one bad deed by one party around which everything else can be understood.

We get to pertinent demands, values, and harms by asking who the stakeholders are, what matters for them, why it matters, and how much of a claim it has on others—that is, how demanding people can reasonably be on others to accommodate their preferences. Regarding freedom of speech, certain people want to speak their minds; others might take offense at speech that belittles their deity or religious leaders. Demands not to defame leaders carry more weight than demands that their names not even be mentioned. In territorial disputes we need to know why people think they should own or control spaces, and perhaps also where else they would live otherwise. If their claims are grounded in religious texts that have no validity to others, those claims will be the weaker for it. Yet we must still recognize that that is how they see things and must not automatically think of compromise as defeat.

To be sure, action is required: laws are passed, votes cast, and people are saved or left to perish. Indeed, mature appreciation of complexity insists that we act. What matters is how we act. To act with awareness of moral complexity is to act while acknowledging what is lost or damaged when we make a choice; to avoid triumphalism or zealotry, remaining open to future revision or reconciliation; and to strive, wherever possible, for repair or restoration after the fact, recognizing the harms incurred even by lesser evils.

Moral complexity means you do not get to wash your hands, as Pontius Pilate did, after making a call. It also entails a set of intellectual virtues: humility, patience, willingness to delay closure, and the stamina to bear unresolved difficulty. Many philosophers and reflective actors follow either consequentialist or non-consequentialist rules. They might be utilitarians if they are the kind of consequentialist who thinks right and wrong actions are determined by what generates the greatest amount of happiness. Or they might be Kantian deontologists if what matters foremost to them is never to use persons merely as instruments to further goals. But even those who make decisions in such ways are well-advised to do so only after looking at the world with an orientation of moral complexity.

The Charge of “Bothsidesism”

To many, a “bothsidesism” way of thinking is suspect, perhaps infuriating. “Bothsidesism” connotes cowardly or lazy impulses to split the difference or treat all sides as equally valid, regardless of merits. In 2017, when white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, U.S. president Donald Trump saying “there are good people on both sides” caricatured the ethical stakes. In climate change debates (most prominently in the United States), a pretense of “balance” between scientific consensus and denialism is dangerous.

However, moral complexity is not about refusing judgment but about refusing premature or undifferentiated judgment—about resisting the smoothing over of conflicts out of haste or comfort. Bothsidesism is an abdication: it shrinks from the agonizing labor of distinguishing, comparing, and reckoning with costs. Moral complexity, by contrast, requires the discipline to take all relevant claims as seriously as possible and move toward closure as compelled by the deliberative weight of reasons.

“Single-issue” moral thinking—totalizing in its certainty—has justified incalculable violence in the name of purity or progress, including religious wars, ideological purges, or zealous “culture wars.” Conversely, leaning hard into bothsidesism often fails us in a different manner: pretexts of “balance” enable entrenched power, silence the vulnerable, or drape injustice in a cloak of neutrality.

Again, decisions must be made. Certain considerations must be identified as more important than others, but always after the lay of the land is thoroughly understood, and with a perspective that justification in principle must be given to all stakeholders. Moral clarity should not typically be about seeing one thing as overwhelmingly important, like the North Star brightening up the sky. Instead, it should typically be about acknowledging multifarious considerations and working one’s way toward a reasoned course of action.

To be sure, sometimes circumstances demand immediate, unequivocal judgment—say, in response to genocide, systemic violence, or clear abuses of power. Complexity is no excuse for delay or passivity. Instead, it calls us to act with full awareness of context and cost. Even when decisive action is justified, complexity insists that we acknowledge what is lost, damaged, or left unresolved, and that we remain open to repair.

We must also guard against misuse of “complexity talk” by the powerful to evade responsibility. Complexity should sharpen, not blunt, alertness to entrenched interests or silenced voices. It is a tool for deeper clarity, not endless postponement.

Philosophical Traditions of Complexity

Emphasis on moral complexity finds allies among a motley set of philosophical positions. Let me offer a few samples.

Isaiah Berlin argued that the great goods that orient human life—justice, liberty, equality, mercy, honor, pleasure—are not always compatible. At certain crossroads, no decision will satisfy all goods or avoid loss. Even righteous action comes at the expense of something valuable. Value pluralism asks us to accept that ethical adulthood means living with loss and unresolved conflict.¹

Bernard Williams and Martha Nussbaum explore dilemmas where every option entails wrongdoing, leaving behind “moral remainders”—guilt, remorse, or sorrow for what could not be preserved. They urge us not to rationalize these away, but to attend to their ethical force.²

Feminist and critical race philosophers, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw or Patricia Hill Collins, highlight how lives are shaped by overlapping structures of power and exclusion. They compel us to account for intersectional harms and warn against flattening complex experiences through monolithic judgment.³

Pragmatists advocate for experimental, context-sensitive moral inquiry. John Dewey, in particular, urges ongoing reflection, learning from failed solutions, and a readiness to revise as circumstances change.⁴

For Hegel, finally, contradiction is the engine of ethical and historical growth. Resolution is never final; the work of reconciling particular and universal or self and other proceeds through tensions.⁵

Philosophy has many ways of approaching the topic of moral complexity.

The Work of Moral Adulthood

Heeding complexity is not about abandoning judgment but about deepening it. It sharpens empathy: seeing why competing claims have their own internal reasonableness, noting the ways moral vision is shaped by our history and station. It expands responsibility: knowing we cannot act with clean hands but can act with honesty and care. It demands moral imagination and creativity: understanding that solutions to problems require engagement across boundaries, and under different circumstances might lead to different results. It tempers action: making us less likely to “other” adversaries or imagine that right action must be pure or costless.

Above all, it asks us to be vivid and specific about the texture of conflict and loss, and resist temptation to consider conflicts settled just because we have made a choice. In a world desperate for certainty and closure, to practice moral complexity is to honor the fullness of human experience in the reality of competing demands, values, and harms. We might not achieve harmony, but we can strive for a humility and compassion that always bear witness to unresolvable moral residues.

An Illustration: The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, and as such holds special significance globally. A commitment to the Jewish people, however, must also be a commitment to the Palestinian people, since their fates are inextricably intertwined. Millions of Jews live in the area, as do millions of Palestinians, for whom, too, that land is home. Since both sides have valid claims, compromises are necessary.

Too many people think Palestinians should be okay with living barely above subsistence. Like their Jewish neighbors, Palestinians are entitled to pursue flourishing lives and peace will not come unless they can. History has shown us time and again that people revolt when that is the only way to bring about meaningful change in their lives. Palestinians have been abandoned too many times.

Like the U.S. response after September 11th, Israel’s military campaign shows little promise of making the world safer for the global Jewish population. To kill every member of Hamas or Hezbollah would inflict so much trauma that resurgent violence against Jews worldwide could be guaranteed for decades. International law and just war theory acknowledge that justified military responses may involve collateral harm. However, the Israeli government has stretched claims to proportionality (and lack of consideration of civilian lives in Gaza) far beyond any plausibility. Moral complexity requires acknowledging this reality alongside condemnation of the terrorist attacks of October 7th, when Hamas brutally targeted civilians, including men, women, the elderly, and young children. Recognizing moral complexity in no way excuses atrocity or negates responsibility. Atrocities do not cancel each other out—and the fact that certain violations occurred earlier than another does not mean they justify whatever comes later.

Moral complexity also applies to language. Some treat any criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic. This position unwisely makes the space for legitimate political opposition too narrow. Moreover, positions like Zionism and slogans like “from the river to the sea” legitimately mean different things to different people. We should not assume that others mean what we consider to be the worst interpretation of such phrases.

Acknowledging moral complexity means these realities all need to be named and placed next to each other. They do not cancel each other out. The way forward is to acknowledge the full humanity of all people in this conflict, and to recognize that they have claims to dignity and flourishing lives. That is the kind of thinking that moral complexity makes possible in countless other contexts.

—Mathias Risse

Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard University. His research is primarily in political philosophy and philosophy of technology.

NOTES