The pharmacist, the husband and the question with no answer
A man’s wife is seriously ill. There is a drug that could save her, but the pharmacist who makes it is charging ten times the production cost. The man does not have the money, he has tried everything, no one will help him. He steals the drug.
Did he do the right thing?
Lawrence Kohlberg used this scenario (known as the Heinz dilemma) for almost thirty years, not to find an answer but to study how people reason their way towards one. The finding was not that some answers are right and others wrong, but rather that the level of moral reasoning determines the quality of the answer far more than the answer itself (Kohlberg, 1981).
Those who reason at the conventional level (the most widespread among adults) answer according to the rules: stealing is illegal, therefore it is wrong; the pharmacist has the right to charge whatever price he wants. Rules exist to hold society together, and anyone who breaks them, regardless of the reason, undermines the order on which we all rely.
Those who reason at the post-conventional level (which Kohlberg estimates applies to fewer than 15% of adults) answer differently: rules are tools, not ends in themselves. They exist to protect people’s dignity and rights. When a rule contradicts the principle for which it was created, the individual has a moral duty to transcend it. The wife’s life is worth more than the pharmacist’s property rights.
Correctness stands on one side and humanity on the other. Unfortunately, they do not always coincide.
Rationality without emotion makes worse decisions
There is a finding in neuroscience that makes this tension even more interesting.
In the late 1980s, Antonio Damasio studied patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that integrates emotions into decision-making). These people’s rationality was perfectly intact: they reasoned, calculated, analysed; yet they felt no emotions in relation to their choices.
The expected result was that they would make better decisions, free from emotional distortions, guided by pure logic. The actual result was the opposite: they made worse decisions, far worse, to the point of being unable to decide at all. They spent hours weighing trivial options, made disastrous financial decisions, could not sustain relationships. Rationality without the guidance of emotions does not produce clarity: it produces paralysis or error (Damasio, 1994).
Damasio called this mechanism the “somatic marker hypothesis”: emotions act as rapid signals that the body sends to the brain to steer choices. They do not replace reasoning; they guide it, accelerate it, give it direction. Without them, the rational brain is like a compass without a needle: it works perfectly, but points nowhere.
Correctness is a rational construct, humanity an emotional one, and Damasio tells us that the latter is not the enemy of the former: it is its prerequisite.
Two moral languages
Kohlberg built his theory around a concept of morality grounded in justice: rules, rights, universal principles. Carol Gilligan, his colleague and later critic, proposed that there is a second moral language, equally developed and sophisticated, grounded in care: relationships, responsibility towards others, attention to the specific circumstances of the person in front of you (Gilligan, 1982).
In the language of justice, the moral question is: “what is the correct rule to apply?”
In the language of care, the question is: “what does this person need in this situation?”
The two questions may well produce the same answer, but when they do not (and this rarely happens), the first chooses consistency with the system, the second chooses the person’s well-being. In my view, it is profoundly naive to think that the first is always sufficient.
The manager, the policy and the person
Let us take a leap beyond philosophy and towards what happens every day, in every organisation.
An employee is going through a difficult time in their personal life: their performance declines, and company policy sets out a formal process (measurable objectives, a review after three months, consequences if the objectives are not met). The procedure is correct.
The manager who applies the policy to the letter is doing the right thing according to the rules. The manager who pauses, asks what is happening, offers some flexibility and looks for a solution that accommodates both the person and the outcome is doing something different: choosing the human over the correct.
The policy exists for a reason: it protects the organisation from arbitrary discretion, ensures fair treatment, creates predictability. These are real and important functions, built under conditions that in chemistry would be defined as STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure). But a policy that leaves no room for human judgement is a policy that has replaced thought with execution.
The post-conventional level in management is rarer, more demanding and riskier: it means looking at the rule, understanding why it exists, and deciding whether, in this particular situation, applying it to the letter serves the principle for which it was created or betrays it.
The risk of the human without the correct
It would be dishonest not to address the corresponding risk.
Humanity without the structure of correctness is pure arbitrariness, almost anarchic, perhaps even chaotic. If every decision depends on the “feeling” of the moment, on the empathy of the person deciding, on their personal relationship with those involved, the result is a system in which rules mean nothing and all that matters is who you know or who you like. It becomes favouritism under a nobler name, because your emotions will always be stronger where a relationship exists.
Rules are needed: they protect those without power from the discretion of those who have it. They create a floor beneath which no one can fall and ensure that the response to a situation does not depend on the mood or prejudices of whoever is responding.
Choosing between the correct and the human is not the point; we need to recognise that correctness is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Maturity means holding the two together
Kohlberg would say that the highest level of moral development is not choosing between rules and humanity: it is knowing how to hold both together, using rules as a structure and humanity as a guide.
Damasio would say that the brain already works this way: emotions are not the opposite of rationality, but its necessary complement. A brain that reasons without feeling is a brain that functions poorly.
Gilligan would say that a society which speaks only the language of justice and not that of care is half a society: technically functional and profoundly lacking.
Correctness is a product of thought, humanity a product of feeling. The first is learnt by studying rules, the second by looking at people. And neither, on its own, is enough to find our way in the world, because the world is made of rules and people, and the former should exist to serve the latter, not the other way round.
The distortion occurs when we engage with one another solely over rules, in a world that makes legislating a competitive sport. Where human dialogue founders on notions such as “yes, but we have to comply with agreement X rather than resolution Y”.
The next time you find yourselves choosing between the correct response and the human one, ask yourselves one thing: does the rule I am applying serve the person in front of me, or does it serve itself?