I blogged recently about causal and moral respobsibility, and mentioned in passing the disturbing phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck was identified by Thomas Nagel and Bernard Willams, who point out that contingent circumstances—- birth, geographical location, being in the right place at the right time—- can make a difference to our evaluation of a person’s moral worth. Imagine someone, for instance, whose personality and beliefs would have led him to participate cheerfully in genocide in Bosnia, were it not for the fact that he was living a quiet life in Kansas at the time. It’s an interesting problem in moral philosophy.

With this in mind, consider the case made by Chris Sullentrop against the luckiest boy of them all: Harry Potter. “Pampered jock, patsy, fraud,” says Sullentrop:

Why Harry? What makes him so special?

Simple: He’s a glory hog who unfairly receives credit for the accomplishments of others and who skates through school by taking advantage of his inherited wealth and his establishment connections. Harry Potter is no braver than his best friend, Ron Weasley, just richer and better-connected. Harry’s other good friend, Hermione Granger, is smarter and a better student. The one thing Harry excels at is the sport of Quidditch, and his pampered-jock status allows him to slide in his studies, as long as he brings the school glory on the playing field…

Harry Potter is a fraud, and the cult that has risen around him is based on a lie. Potter’s claim to fame, his central accomplishment in life, is surviving a curse placed on him as an infant by the evil wizard Voldemort. As a result, the wizarding world celebrates the young Harry as “The Boy Who Lived.” It’s a curiously passive accomplishment, akin to “The Boy Who Showed Up,” or “The Boy Who Never Took a Sick Day.” And sure enough, just as none of us do anything special by slogging through yet another day, the infant Harry didn’t do anything special by living. It was his mother who saved him, sacrificing her life for his…

What Harry has achieved on his own, without his mother, stems mostly from luck and, more often, inheritance. He’s a trust-fund kid whose success at his school, Hogwarts, is largely attributable to the gifts his friends and relatives lavish upon him… A few examples: an enchanted map (made in part by his father), an invisibility cloak (his father’s), and a state-of-the art magical broom (a gift from his godfather) that is the equivalent of a Lexus in a high-school parking lot.

Sullentrop doesn’t mention a key point about the books that strongly supports his case. Who is Harry’s main enemy from day to day? Why, the other glory-hogging, rich, trust-fund kid with all the nice toys: Draco Malfoy.