Mandarin paradox

The  Mandarin paradox is an ethical parable used to illustrate the difficulty of fulfilling moral obligations when moral punishment is unlikely or impossible, leading to moral disengagement. It has been used to underscore the fragility of ethical standards when moral agents are separated by physical, cultural, or other distance, especially as facilitated by globalization. It was first posed by French writer Chateaubriand in "The Genius of Christianity" (1802): I ask my own heart, I put to myself this question: "If thou couldst by a mere wish kill a fellow-creature in China, and inherit his  fortune in Europe, with the supernatural conviction that the fact  would never be known, wouldst thou consent to form such a  wish?"

The paradox is famously used to foreshadow the character development of the arriviste Eugène de Rastignac in Balzac's novel Père Goriot. Rastignac asks Bianchon if he recalls the paradox, to which Bianchon first replies that he is "at [his] thirty-third mandarin," but then states that he would refuse to take an unknown man's life regardless of circumstance. Rastignac wrongly attributes the quote to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which propagated to later writings.

In fiction

 * The Mandarin (novel) by José Maria de Eça de Queirós
 * Button, Button by Richard Matheson (plus movie The Box (2009 film))
 * The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas