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Jordan asked:

My daughter's boyfriend smugly stated that "Everyone has a price" and that of coursehe "would kill
someone for the right price, as would anyoneif they were being truly honest!"

I was caught somewhat by surprise, and realized that this boy was proud of his personal revelation
and felt that my wife and I were simply not being honest or rational enough to face the facts.

I feel strongly that the world would not work well if everyone held his views and that I would not enjoy
my life if I lived it based on this model. But beyond Biblical or Dickensian arguments, I couldn't
buttress my views on his own terms.

What should I have said?

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You can't argue against a nihilist in moral terms, because he can just deny what you're saying and it
is in the nature of morality that this can be done. A point you could have made is that morality is
based on the recognition of the reality of the subjectivity of others and if he can't see this then there is
a major part of reality which is passing him by. But he can deny this too, saying "that's your reality".
As far as I can see, all you can do is shift your ground and attack him on his logic. That is, he is
holding a belief about others based upon his own case — that he has a price — and it an invalid
inference to move from one's own case to that of others. Of course, he might reply this is true of you
too, but at least there'll be a stalemate and he can't claim to be right.

Rachel Browne

First, what is a "price"? Can you compare money, for example, and someone's life? How much, in
money, is a life worth, and how do you even compare the two? Would a "price" be the saving of
other's lives? Is it worth killing one person if you can guarantee saving the lives of two others?

So I think the first thing to do is establish that his question is basically incoherent: he hasn't defined
his terms and probably hasn't even thought about the implications of, for example, comparing life and
money.

Second, that kind of comparison, even if you can do it, implies that there is something quantitative
involved; something that can be added or at least compared as to magnitude. The "worth" of a "life" is
a quantity, in this view, that can be laid next to another quantity, like money or other lives, and the two
compared as to size or weight. Well, there are philosophers who believe that: the utilitarians (based
on Bentham, but carried much further now than his rather naive approach), and they have had very
elaborate schemes to assign "magnitudes" or something like them to "the good" and then compare
those magnitudes. Now if this guy were sophisticated he could espouse something like that and
muster reasonable defenses. But "price" then would be a much broader term, involving some kind of
measurement of happiness. There are very complex game-theoretic approaches based on this kind
of assumption.

On the other hand, there are probably more philosophers who think that approach is bunk, basically,
and that you cannot compare "goodness" or "life" or "price" like dollars or hamburgers... that you have
to either go by some kind of intuition as to which of two (or more) courses is better, or get unanimous
consent or something like it. You might take a look at Rawls' Theory of Justiceon that one. His
position is a pretty sophisticated methodology for arriving at consensual agreement.

Steven Ravett Brown