Jan 1, 1930 — W. D. Ross THE RIGHT AND THE GOOD Edited by Philip Stratton-Lake CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ⒸOxford University Press 1930, 2002 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 978-0-19-925264-0 1 2 II WHAT MAKES RIGHT ACTS RIGHT? THE HE real point at issue between hedonism and utilitarianism on the one hand and their opponents on the other is not whether 'right' means 'productive of so and so'; for it cannot with any plausibility be maintained that it does. The point at issue is that to which we now pass, viz. whether there is any general character which makes right acts right, and if So, what it is. Among the main historical attempts to state a single characteristic of all right actions which is the foundation of their rightness are those made by egoism and utilitarianism. But I do not propose to discuss these, not because the subject is un- important, but because it has been dealt with so often and so well already, and because there has come to be so much agreement among moral philosophers that neither of these theories is satisfactory. A much more attractive theory has been put forward by Professor Moore: that what makes actions right is that they are productive of more good than could have been produced by any other action open to the agent.¹ This theory is in fact the culmination of all the attempts to base rightness on productivity of some sort of result. The first form this attempt takes is the attempt to base rightness on conduciveness to the advantage or pleasure of the agent. This theory comes to grief over the fact, which stares us in the face, that a great part of duty consists in an observance of the rights and a furtherance of the interests of others, whatever the cost to ourselves may be. Plato and others may be right in holding that a regard for the rights of others never in the long run involves a loss of happiness for the agent, that 'the just life profits a man'. But this, even if true, is irrelevant to the right- ness of the act. As soon as a man does an action because he thinks he will promote his own interests thereby, he is acting not from a sense of its rightness but from self-interest. * I take the theory which, as I have tried to show, seems to be put forward in Ethics rather than the earlier and less plausible theory put forward in Principia Ethica. For the difference, cf. my pp. 8-11. 3 5 WHAT MAKES RIGHT ACTS RIGHT? 17 To the egoistic theory hedonistic utilitarianism supplies a much-needed amendment. It points out correctly that the fact that a certain pleasure will be enjoyed by the agent is no reason why he ought to bring it into being rather than an equal or greater pleasure to be enjoyed by another, though, human nature being what it is, it makes it not unlikely that he will try to bring it into being. But hedonistic utilitarianism in its turn needs a correction. On reflection it seems clear that pleasure is not the only thing in life that we think good in itself, that for instance we think the possession of a good character, or an intelligent understanding of the world, as good or better. A great advance is made by the substitution of 'productive of the greatest good' for 'productive of the greatest pleasure'. Not only is this theory more attractive than hedonistic utilitarianism, but its logical relation to that theory is such that the latter could not be true unless it were true, while it might be true though hedonistic utilitarianism were not. It is in fact one of the logical bases of hedonistic utilitarianism. For the view that what produces the maximum pleasure is right has for its bases the views (1) that what produces the maximum good is right, and (2) that pleasure is the only thing good in itself. If they were not assuming that what produces the maximum good is right, the utilitarians' attempt to show that pleasure is the only thing good in itself, which is in fact the point they take most pains to establish, would have been quite irrelevant to their attempt to prove that only what produces the maximum pleasure is right. If, therefore, it can be shown that productivity of the maximum good is not what makes all right actions right, we shall a fortiori have refuted hedonistic utilitarianism. When a plain man fulfils a promise because he thinks he ought to do so, it seems clear that he does so with no thought of its total consequences, still less with any opinion that these are likely to be the best possible. He thinks in fact much more of the past than of the future. What makes him think it right to act in a certain way is the fact that he has promised to do so -that and, usually, nothing more. That his act will produce the best possible consequences is not his reason for calling it right. What lends colour to the theory we are examining, then, is not 5 18 WHAT MAKES RIGHT ACTS RIGHT? the actions (which form probably a great majority of our actions) in which some such reflection as 'I have promised' is the only reason we give ourselves for thinking a certain action right, but the exceptional cases in which the consequences of fulfilling a promise (for instance) would be so disastrous to others that we judge it right not to do so. It must of course be admitted that such cases exist. If I have promised to meet a friend at a particular time for some trivial purpose, I should certainly think myself justified in breaking my engagement if by doing so I could prevent a serious accident or bring relief to the victims of one. And the supporters of the view we are examining hold that my thinking so is due to my thinking that I shall bring more good into existence by the one action than by the other. A different account may, however, be given of the matter, an account which will, I believe, show itself to be the true one. It may be said that besides the duty of fulfilling promises I have and recognize a duty of relieving distress, and that when I think it right to do the latter at the cost of not doing the former, it is not because I think I shall produce more good thereby but because I think it the duty which is in the circum- stances more of a duty. This account surely corresponds much more closely with what we really think in such a situation. If, so far as I can see, I could bring equal amounts of good into being by fulfilling my promise and by helping some one to whom I had made no promise, I should not hesitate to regard the former as my duty. Yet on the view that what is right is right because it is productive of the most good I should not so regard it. There are two theories, each in its way simple, that offer a solution of such cases of conscience. One is the view of Kant, that there are certain duties of perfect obligation, such as those of fulfilling promises, of paying debts, of telling the truth, which admit of no exception whatever in favour of duties of imperfect obligation, such as that of relieving distress. The other is the view of, for instance, Professor Moore and Dr. Rashdall, that there is only the duty of producing good, and These are not strictly speaking duties, but things that tend to be our duty, or prima facie duties. Cf. pp. 19-20.

Oct 1, 1996 — Journal of the History of Philosophy Toward a Genealogy of 'Deontology' Robert B. Louden Journal of the History of Philosophy Johns Hopkins University Press Volume 34, Number 4, October 1996 pp. 571-592 10.1353/hph.1996.0070 Article View Citation Related Content Additional Information Purchase/rental options available: Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Toward a Genealogy of 'Deontology' ROBERT B. LOUDEN [A]ny choiceof a conceptual scheme presupposes values. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History tN Va'HICSAS ELS~.WHEI~,the basic categories used by writers to mark the conceptual terrain of their field profoundly affect readers' understanding of what is important within the field. And in ethics (as elsewhere), most writers who habitually employ the currently accepted categories of their discipline have no knowledge of the particular history of these categories--of who first coined them, of the purposes for which they were originally intended, of how their meanings have shifted over the years, of how ascending categories have displaced descending ones, of who is primarily responsible for their current meanings, etc. As an illustration of this claim, I propose to examine the history of'deontology' in ethics, with an aim to making the recent topographical shifts within the field less "unknown to ourselves.''~ Who was the first author to employ "the general, ugly, and familiar head1Cf . Nietzsche's opening remark in The Genealogy of Morals: "We are unknown to ourselves, we seekers after knowledge [w/r Erkennendon]" (Pref., l). It is perhaps worth noting at the outset that the following exercise in moral genealogy is not terribly Nietzschean--I myself accept very little of the specifics of his attack on morality. However, I do concur with Nietzsche's general convictionthat moral philosophers have paid insufficientattention to the origin and development of moral concepts (including technical concepts within their own discipline). The following moral genealogy is also decidedly un-Foucaultian,for, unlike Foucauh, I do not contrast genealogy with history, but hold rather that (as Alexander Nehamas puts it) "genealogy simply/s history, correctly practiced" (Nietzsche: Life as Literature [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], ~46, n.l.). I wish to establish the origins and development of 'deontology' in modern ethics. Foucault, on the other hand, daims that a "genealogy of values, morality, asceticism, and knowledge will never confuse itself with a quest for their 'origins' " CNietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader [New York: Pantheon Books, 1984], 80). For further discussion of the senses of'genealogy' in Nietzsche, see the essays in Part II of Richard Schacht, ed., Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). [571 ] 57~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:4 OCTOBER 1996 ing of deontology TMwithin ethics, and how was the term first used? How have the term's primary meanings within ethics changed over the years, and who is responsible for these changes? How did 'deontology' come to be viewed as one of the "two main concepts of ethics,"s and what categories did it replace during its ascendancy? Although one writer has recently reminded us that "the canon that sorts all moral theories as deontological or teleological" has, like all other canons, "a history,"4 I believe that the details of this particular history have still not been accurately traced. 1. ETYMOLOGY The English word 'deontology' is a neologism coined from the Greek deon, deont-: that which is binding, needful, right, proper (neuter of the present participle of dei: it is binding on one, it behooves one to do, one must, one ought) + logia: discourse. Although many ancient Greek authors frequently used the word dei in contexts which arguably express (some) sense of a moral 'ought',5 it should be kept in mind throughout our discussion that 'deontology' tThomas Nagel, The Viewfrom Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 165. In recent discussions the language of deontology is sometimes replaced with that of 'agent-relative values' (in the case of Nagel) or 'agent-centered restrictions' (Samuel Schemer, The Rejection of Consequentialism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 198~]). Though the latter terms are not yet quite as familiar as 'deontology',they are probably about as ugly. They are also not fullyco-extensivewith previous applicationsof 'deontology',and thus (insofar as they succeed in replacing the language of deontology) represent yet another conceptual shift in our basic moral categories. sJohn Rawls, in a frequently-citedpassage, writes: "The two main concepts of ethics are those of the right and the good .... The structure of an ethical theory is... largelydetermined... collapse You are not currently authenticated. If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution or have your own login and password to Project MUSE Authenticate

Jan 1, 2014 — ETHICAL THEORY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL CHAPTER ONE Theories of Ethics Stephen L. Darwall Ethics is customarily divided into two parts: meta-ethics and normative ethics, with the latter being divided further into normative theory and “applied ethics,” the area with which we are concerned in this volume. This last term may not be especially apt, however, since it suggests a relation to normative theory like that applied to pure math- ematics, where theories are derived independently and, only then, applied to cases. When it comes to normative ethics, theories are often formulated and evaluated by reflecting on the ethically relevant features of cases. Thus some philosophers maintain that we can appreciate the general moral relevance of a distinction between killing and letting die (or, more generally yet, between causing evils and letting them happen) by reflecting on a specific case like Judith Thomson's famous "trolley problem," in which a driver can choose between letting his runaway train kill a certain number of people and diverting it on to a track where it would kill a smaller number (Thomson, 1976). In thinking about this case, it seems to be relevant that by diverting the train the driver would be killing people or causing their deaths himself, whereas, if he let the train continue undiverted, he would only be allowing deaths to occur. By seeing this in a specific case, it is argued, we can appreciate a distinction of general theoretical relevance. Another term for our area, "practical ethics," avoids these associations but is mis- leading in a different way, since it suggests that the only cases of interest concern practical questions of what to do. Frequently, what we want to know is not what someone should do (or should have done), but what to think or feel about someone's character or about his having done something out of certain motives. And there are many other ethical questions that are not primarily practical either, even if they have practical implications: do all living species have intrinsic worth? Is aesthetic apprecia- tion a more valuable form of human experience than the relief of a scratched itch? And so on. Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Second Edition. Edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Case Ethics A better term for our area might be "case ethics." Just as there is "case law," the findings of judges about the issues brought before them, including, crucially, the reasoning or ratio that led to their conclusions, so also is there case ethics: our considered judgments about specific ethical issues or cases along with the reasons or principled reflections that underlie our judgments. When it comes to the law, of course, only properly vested judges can render authoritative judgments. With moral and ethical discussion and debate, however, we all have standing to take part, and no individual has the authority to make final judgments, although we may freely accord a kind of authority to those we think especially thoughtful and judicious. When judges render legal judgments, it is not enough for them simply to find for one side or the other. They must also support their judgments with applicable law and legal principles, aiming to show how anyone reflecting on these laws and principles might reasonably have come to the same conclusion. This rarely involves anything like a deductive proof. As Aristotle remarked, we cannot sensibly demand more logical rigor than "the subject-matter admits of" (Aristotle, 1998). It is enough if judges point to laws, principles, and ideals under which the case might reasonably be subsumed and which, when applied, might be seen to support their finding in the case. No doubt it is a mistake to view all of ethics on the model of law, as a number of philosophers have noted (Anscombe, 1958; McDowell, 1979; Dancy, 1993). Some ethical questions require a sensitivity and insight that seems more akin to aes- thetic appreciation than to anything that can be supported by theoretical principles. None the less, even art critics feel bound to give reasons for their judgments, citing considerations that can help others enter into their reflections and see the work as they see it. Moreover, many of the cases of applied or case ethics with which we are most often occupied are questions of public morality, where we implicitly under- stand our discussions and inquiries to take place in a democratic society in which everyone has standing to participate. Moreover, when these issues concern moral obligations the area where, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, we hold one another accountable through formal and informal sanctions – the same considerations that lead us to demand a publicly formulated justification for legal judgments would seem to apply to moral judgments also, if not, perhaps, quite so urgently (Mill, 1957). A restric- tion of liberty of some kind will seem to be involved, calling for a principled justification that could be seen to be acceptable to our fellow citizens who would, in our view, be bound by them.Normative Ethical Theory Philosophers use the term “normative ethical theory" to refer broadly to principles, concepts, and ideals that can be cited in support of ethical judgments about cases. In this broad sense, we commit ourselves implicitly to some theory (or range of theories) whenever we give reasons to support our judgments. Furthermore, there is a sense in which we commit ourselves to the existence of some justifying background theory 14 Stephen L. Darwall whenever we even make an ethical judgment. This is because of an important feature of ethical concepts and properties that we might call their reason- or warrant-depend- ence. When, for example, I judge that something is good, I say, not just that I value it, but that there is reason to value it – that valuing it is warranted, an attitude one ought to have. As a logical matter, however, this can be true only if something has other properties: the reasons for valuing it. And such reasons cannot simply consist in the property that it is good, since that is itself the property of there being such reasons. Unlike, say, the property of yellowness, which might attach to something all by itself, as it were, ethical properties require, by their very nature, completion by further proper- ties that are their reasons or grounds. If I judge a certain experience to be valuable, I must think it has aspects that make it good, features that are the grounds of its value. Or if I think that a certain action is morally required, I must think there are certain characteristics of the action and the situation that make it morally obligatory, features that are the grounds of its obligatoriness. And these thoughts commit me to the exist- ence of background normative theories. I am committed to thinking there are truths that relate an experience's having certain properties to its value, such that any experi- ence that had exactly those (and no other ethically relevant) properties would be valu- able also, other things being equal. Or, similarly, I am committed to thinking there exists some valid moral principle that relates an action's having certain features to its being morally required. In this broad sense, then, the investigation of normative ethical theories is unavoid- able if we are to think about ethical issues with any care. Any judgment we make about an individual case will be no better than the background theories we commit ourselves to in making it. Moreover, there are special considerations that commit us to normative theories of a distinctively robust sort when the judgments we make concern questions of moral right and wrong. This is because, as I noted briefly above, the part of ethics we call morality is modeled on law, even if other parts are not. What is wrong is what we are appropriately held accountable for doing, what warrants blame unless we have some adequate excuse. Practices of accountability are in their nature directive, and frequently even coercive. As with a judge's legal findings, therefore, we properly feel some pressure to articulate principles (or theories) that are capable both of justify- ing our judgments and of being publicly addressed to and accepted by other members of the moral community. Someone we hold accountable for wrongdoing, we think, should be capable, in some sense, of accepting our judgment, of being brought to see that it is a reasonable judg- ment to have made. This is very different from other ethical assessments, as when, for example, we feel disdain for someone as a coward, or hold some human pursuits to be less worthy than others. Disdain for cowardice does not attempt to direct the coward or to hold him accountable, and because there is no prescriptive or liberty-limiting element, there is no thought that disdain is appropriate only if its object should be able to accept it and see things the same way. To the contrary, disdain may only increase if its object cannot "get it." If, however, we judge someone to be incapable of assessing his own conduct morally, this can lead us to think that he is not a fit object of moral evaluation, since he is incapable of entering into a mutually accountable moral community. It is therefore reasonable to accept a burden of being able to formulate public justifications for judgments of moral right and wrong that is similar to one we impose on judges' Theories of Ethics 15

Jun 26, 2021 — What is virtue ethics? What are some of its strengths as an ethical theory? In this video we'll explore virtue ethics by contrasting it with utilitarianism and deontology. ►► Get the top 10 beginner-friendly philosophy books! Download the FREE 10 Best Philosophy Books for Beginners Guide → https://www.thephilosophylab.com/books Keep thinking ethically and living wisely! -Christopher #VirtueEthics #NormativeEthics #Aristotle

May 15, 2021 — A very brief introduction to Kantianism: the moral theory of Immanuel Kant.

Oct 30, 2020 — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Menu Browse Table of Contents What's New Random Entry Chronological Archives About Editorial Information About the SEP Editorial Board How to Cite the SEP Special Characters Advanced Tools Contact Support SEP Support the SEP PDFs for SEP Friends Make a Donation SEPIA for Libraries Entry Navigation Entry Contents Bibliography Academic Tools Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top Deontological Ethics First published Wed Nov 21, 2007; substantive revision Fri Oct 30, 2020 The word deontology derives from the Greek words for duty (deon) and science (or study) of (logos). In contemporary moral philosophy, deontology is one of those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required, forbidden, or permitted. In other words, deontology falls within the domain of moral theories that guide and assess our choices of what we ought to do (deontic theories), in contrast to those that guide and assess what kind of person we are and should be (aretaic [virtue] theories). And within the domain of moral theories that assess our choices, deontologists—those who subscribe to deontological theories of morality—stand in opposition to consequentialists. 1. Deontology’s Foil: Consequentialism 2. Deontological Theories 2.1 Agent-Centered Deontological Theories 2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories 2.3 Contractualist Deontological Theories 2.4 Deontological Theories and Kant 3. The Advantages of Deontological Theories 4. The Weaknesses of Deontological Theories 5. Deontology’s Relation(s) to Consequentialism Reconsidered 5.1 Making no concessions to consequentialism: a purely deontological rationality? 5.2 Making no concessions to deontology: a purely consequentialist rationality? 6. Deontology and Uncertainty About Outcomes 7. Deontological Theories and Metaethics Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Deontology’s Foil: Consequentialism Because deontological theories are best understood in contrast to consequentialist ones, a brief look at consequentialism and a survey of the problems with it that motivate its deontological opponents, provides a helpful prelude to taking up deontological theories themselves. Consequentialists hold that choices—acts and/or intentions—are to be morally assessed solely by the states of affairs they bring about. Consequentialists thus must specify initially the states of affairs that are intrinsically valuable—often called, collectively, “the Good.” They then are in a position to assert that whatever choices increase the Good, that is, bring about more of it, are the choices that it is morally right to make and to execute. (The Good in that sense is said to be prior to “the Right.”) Consequentialists can and do differ widely in terms of specifying the Good. Some consequentialists are monists about the Good. Utilitarians, for example, identify the Good with pleasure, happiness, desire satisfaction, or “welfare” in some other sense. Other consequentialists are pluralists regarding the Good. Some of such pluralists believe that how the Good is distributed among persons (or all sentient beings) is itself partly constitutive of the Good, whereas conventional utilitarians merely add or average each person’s share of the Good to achieve the Good’s maximization. Moreover, there are some consequentialists who hold that the doing or refraining from doing, of certain kinds of acts are themselves intrinsically valuable states of affairs constitutive of the Good. An example of this is the positing of rights not being violated, or duties being kept, as part of the Good to be maximized—the so-called “utilitarianism of rights” (Nozick 1974). None of these pluralist positions erase the difference between consequentialism and deontology. For the essence of consequentialism is still present in such positions: an action would be right only insofar as it maximizes these Good-making states of affairs being caused to exist. However much consequentialists differ about what the Good consists in, they all agree that the morally right choices are those that increase (either directly or indirectly) the Good. Moreover, consequentialists generally agree that the Good is “agent-neutral” (Parfit 1984; Nagel 1986). That is, valuable states of affairs are states of affairs that all agents have reason to achieve without regard to whether such states of affairs are achieved through the exercise of one’s own agency or not. Consequentialism is frequently criticized on a number of grounds. Two of these are particularly apt for revealing the temptations motivating the alternative approach to deontic ethics that is deontology. The two criticisms pertinent here are that consequentialism is, on the one hand, overly demanding, and, on the other hand, that it is not demanding enough. The criticism regarding extreme demandingness runs like this: for consequentialists, there is no realm of moral permissions, no realm of going beyond one’s moral duty (supererogation), no realm of moral indifference. All acts are seemingly either required or forbidden. And there also seems to be no space for the consequentialist in which to show partiality to one’s own projects or to one’s family, friends, and countrymen, leading some critics of consequentialism to deem it a profoundly alienating and perhaps self-effacing moral theory (Williams 1973). On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it seemingly permits. It seemingly demands (and thus, of course, permits) that in certain circumstances innocents be killed, beaten, lied to, or deprived of material goods to produce greater benefits for others. Consequences—and only consequences—can conceivably justify any kind of act, for it does not matter how harmful it is to some so long as it is more beneficial to others. A well-worn example of this over-permissiveness of consequentialism is that of a case standardly called, Transplant. A surgeon has five patients dying of organ failure and one healthy patient whose organs can save the five. In the right circumstances, surgeon will be permitted (and indeed required) by consequentialism to kill the healthy patient to obtain his organs, assuming there are no relevant consequences other than the saving of the five and the death of the one. Likewise, consequentialism will permit (in a case that we shall call, Fat Man) that a fat man be pushed in front of a runaway trolley if his being crushed by the trolley will halt its advance towards five workers trapped on the track. We shall return to these examples later on. Consequentialists are of course not bereft of replies to these two criticisms. Some retreat from maximizing the Good to “satisficing”—that is, making the achievement of only a certain level of the Good mandatory (Slote 1984). This move opens up some space for personal projects and relationships, as well as a realm of the morally permissible. It is not clear, however, that satisficing is adequately motivated, except to avoid the problems of maximizing. Nor is it clear that the level of mandatory satisficing can be nonarbitrarily specified, or that satisficing will not require deontological constraints to protect satisficers from maximizers. Another move is to introduce a positive/negative duty distinction within consequentialism. On this view, our (negative) duty is not to make the world worse by actions having bad consequences; lacking is a corresponding (positive) duty to make the world better by actions having good consequences (Bentham 1789 (1948); Quinton 2007). We thus have a consequentialist duty not to kill the one in Transplant or in Fat Man; and there is no counterbalancing duty to save five that overrides this. Yet as with the satisficing move, it is unclear how a consistent consequentialist can motivate this restriction on all-out optimization of the Good. Yet another idea popular with consequentialists is to move from consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses acts to consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses rules—or character-trait inculcation—and assesses acts only indirectly by reference to such rules (or character-traits) (Alexander 1985). Its proponents contend that indirect consequentialism can avoid the criticisms of direct (act) consequentialism because it will not legitimate egregious violations of ordinary moral standards—e.g., the killing of the innocent to bring about some better state of affairs—nor will it be overly demanding and thus alienating each of us from our own projects. The relevance here of these defensive maneuvers by consequentialists is their common attempt to mimic the intuitively plausible aspects of a non-consequentialist, deontological approach to ethics. For as we shall now explore, the strengths of deontological approaches lie: (1) in their categorical prohibition of actions like the killing of innocents, even when good consequences are in the offing; and (2) in their permission to each of us to pursue our own projects free of any constant demand that we shape those projects so as to make everyone else well off. 2. Deontological Theories Having now briefly taken a look at deontologists’ foil, consequentialist theories of right action, we turn now to examine deontological theories. In contrast to consequentialist theories, deontological theories judge the morality of choices by criteria different from the states of affairs those choices bring about. The most familiar forms of deontology, and also the forms presenting the greatest contrast to consequentialism, hold that some choices cannot be justified by their effects—that no matter how morally good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden. On such familiar deontological accounts of morality, agents cannot make certain wrongful choices even if by doing so the number of those exact kinds of wrongful choices will be minimized (because other agents will be prevented from engaging in similar wrongful choices). For such deontologists, what makes a choice right is its conformity with a moral norm. Such norms are to be simply obeyed by each moral agent; such norm-keepings are not to be maximized by each agent. In this sense, for such deontologists, the Right is said to have priority over the Good. If an act is not in accord with the Right, it may not be undertaken, no matter the Good that it might produce (including even a Good consisting of acts in accordance with the Right). Analogously, deontologists typically supplement non-consequentialist obligations with non-consequentialist permissions (Scheffler 1982). That is, certain actions can be right even though not maximizing of good consequences, for the rightness of such actions consists in their instantiating certain norms (here, of permission and not of obligation). Such actions are permitted, not just in the weak sense that there is no obligation not to do them, but also in the strong sense that one is permitted to do them even though they are productive of less good consequences than their alternatives (Moore 2008). Such strongly permitted actions include actions one is obligated to do, but (importantly) also included are actions one is not obligated to do. It is this last feature of such actions that warrants their separate mention for deontologists. 2.1 Agent-Centered Deontological Theories The most traditional mode of taxonomizing deontological theories is to divide them between agent-centered versus victim-centered (or “patient-centered”) theories (Scheffler 1988; Kamm 2007). Consider first agent-centered deontological theories. According to agent-centered theories, we each have both permissions and obligations that give us agent-relative reasons for action. An agent-relative reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons; neither is to be confused with either the relativistic reasons of a relativist meta-ethics, nor with the subjective reasons that form the nerve of psychological explanations of human action (Nagel 1986). An agent-relative reason is so-called because it is a reason relative to the agent whose reason it is; it need not (although it may) constitute a reason for anyone else. Thus, an agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking some action; and because it is agent-relative, the obligation does not necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action. Each parent, for example, is commonly thought to have such special obligations to his/her child, obligations not shared by anyone else. Likewise, an agent-relative permission is a permission for some agent to do some act even though others may not be permitted to aid that agent in the doing of his permitted action. Each parent, to revert to the same example, is commonly thought to be permitted (at the least) to save his own child even at the cost of not saving two other children to whom he has no special relation. Agent-centered theories and the agent-relative reasons on which they are based not only enjoin each of us to do or not to do certain things; they also instruct me to treat my friends, my family, my promisees in certain ways because they are mine, even if by neglecting them I could do more for others’ friends, families, and promisees. At the heart of agent-centered theories (with their agent-relative reasons) is the idea of agency. The moral plausibility of agent-centered theories is rooted here. The idea is that morality is intensely personal, in the sense that we are each enjoined to keep our own moral house in order. Our categorical obligations are not to focus on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus of our categorical obligations is to keep our own agency free of moral taint. Each agent’s distinctive moral concern with his/her own agency puts some pressure on agent-centered theories to clarify how and when our agency is or is not involved in various situations. Agent-centered theories famously divide between those that emphasize the role of intention or other mental states in constituting the morally important kind of agency, and those that emphasize the actions of agents as playing such a role. There are also agent-centered theories that emphasize both intentions and actions equally in constituting the morally relevant agency of persons. On the first of these three agent-relative views, it is most commonly asserted that it is our intended ends and intended means that most crucially define our agency. Such intentions mark out what it is we set out to achieve through our actions. If we intend something bad as an end, or even as a means to some more beneficent end, we are said to have “set ourselves at evil,” something we are categorically forbidden to do (Aquinas Summa Theologica). Three items usefully contrasted with such intentions are belief, risk, and cause. If we predict that an act of ours will result in evil, such prediction is a cognitive state (of belief); it is not a conative state of intention to bring about such a result, either as an end in itself or as a means to some other end. In this case, our agency is involved only to the extent that we have shown ourselves as being willing to tolerate evil results flowing from our acts; but we have not set out to achieve such evil by our acts. Likewise, a risking and/or causing of some evil result is distinct from any intention to achieve it. We can intend such a result, and we can even execute such an intention so that it becomes a trying, without in fact either causing or even risking it. (It is, however, true that we must believe we are risking the result to some extent, however minimal, for the result to be what we intend to bring about by our act.) Also, we can cause or risk such results without intending them. For example, we can intend to kill and even try to kill someone without killing him; and we can kill him without intending or trying to kill him, as when we kill accidentally. Intending thus does not collapse into risking, causing, or predicting; and on the version of agent-centered deontology here considered, it is intending (or perhaps trying) alone that marks the involvement of our agency in a way so as to bring agent-centered obligations and permissions into play. Deontologists of this stripe are committed to something like the doctrine of double effect, a long-established doctrine of Catholic theology (Woodward 2001). The Doctrine in its most familiar form asserts that we are categorically forbidden to intend evils such as killing the innocent or torturing others, even though doing such acts would minimize the doing of like acts by others (or even ourselves) in the future. By contrast, if we only risk, cause, or predict that our acts will have consequences making them acts of killing or of torture, then we might be able to justify the doing of such acts by the killing/torture-minimizing consequences of such actions. Whether such distinctions are plausible is standardly taken to measure the plausibility of an intention-focused version of the agent-centered version of deontology. There are other versions of mental-state focused agent relativity that do not focus on intentions (Hurd 1994). Some of these versions focus on predictive belief as much as on intention (at least when the belief is of a high degree of certainty). Other versions focus on intended ends (“motives”) alone. Still others focus on the deliberative processes that precede the formation of intentions, so that even to contemplate the doing of an evil act impermissibly invokes our agency (Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979). But intention-focused versions are the most familiar versions of so-called “inner wickedness” versions of agent-centered deontology. The second kind of agent-centered deontology is one focused on actions, not mental states. Such a view can concede that all human actions must originate with some kind of mental state, often styled a volition or a willing; such a view can even concede that volitions or willings are an intention of a certain kind (Moore 1993, Ch. 6). Indeed, such source of human actions in willing is what plausibly connects actions to the agency that is of moral concern on the agent-centered version of deontology. Yet to will the movement of a finger on a trigger is distinct from an intention to kill a person by that finger movement. The act view of agency is thus distinct from the intentions (or other mental state) view of agency. On this view, our agent-relative obligations and permissions have as their content certain kinds of actions: we are obligated not to kill innocents for example. The killing of an innocent of course requires that there be a death of such innocent, but there is no agency involved in mere events such as deaths. Needed for there to be a killing are two other items. One we remarked on before: the action of the putative agent must have its source in a willing. But the other maker of agency here is more interesting for present purposes: the willing must cause the death of the innocent for an act to be a killing of such innocent. Much (on this view) is loaded into the requirement of causation. First, causings of evils like deaths of innocents are commonly distinguished from omissions to prevent such deaths. Holding a baby’s head under water until it drowns is a killing; seeing a baby lying face down in a puddle and doing nothing to save it when one could do so easily is a failure to prevent its death. Our categorical obligations are usually negative in content: we are not to kill the baby. We may have an obligation to save it, but this will not be an agent-relative obligation, on the view here considered, unless we have some special relationship to the baby. Second, causings are distinguished from allowings. In a narrow sense of the word we will here stipulate, one allows a death to occur when: (1) one’s action merely removes a defense the victim otherwise would have had against death; and (2) such removal returns the victim to some morally appropriate baseline (Kamm 1994, 1996; MacMahan 2003). Thus, mercy-killings, or euthanasia, are outside of our deontological obligations (and thus eligible for justification by good consequences) so long as one’s act: (1) only removes a defense against death that the agent herself had earlier provided, such as disconnecting medical equipment that is keeping the patient alive when that disconnecting is done by the medical personnel that attached the patient to the equipment originally; and (2) the equipment could justifiably have been hooked up to another patient, where it could do some good, had the doctors known at the time of connection what they know at the time of disconnection. Third, one is said not to cause an evil such as a death when one’s acts merely enable (or aid) some other agent to cause such evil (Hart and Honore 1985). Thus, one is not categorically forbidden to drive the terrorists to where they can kill the policeman (if the alternative is death of one’s family), even though one would be categorically forbidden to kill the policeman oneself (even where the alternative is death of one’s family) (Moore 2008). Nor is one categorically forbidden to select which of a group of villagers shall be unjustly executed by another who is pursuing his own purposes (Williams 1973). Fourth, one is said not to cause an evil such as a death when one merely redirects a presently existing threat to many so that it now threatens only one (or a few) (Thomson 1985). In the time-honored example of the run-away trolley (Trolley), one may turn a trolley so that it runs over one trapped workman so as to save five workmen trapped on the other track, even though it is not permissible for an agent to have initiated the movement of the trolley towards the one to save five (Foot 1967; Thomson 1985). Fifth, our agency is said not to be involved in mere accelerations of evils about to happen anyway, as opposed to causing such evils by doing acts necessary for such evils to occur (G. Williams 1961; Brody 1996). Thus, when a victim is about to fall to his death anyway, dragging a rescuer with him too, the rescuer may cut the rope connecting them. Rescuer is accelerating, but not causing, the death that was about to occur anyway. All of these last five distinctions have been suggested to be part and parcel of another centuries-old Catholic doctrine, that of the doctrine of doing and allowing (see the entry on doing vs. allowing harm) (Moore 2008; Kamm 1994; Foot 1967; Quinn 1989). According to this doctrine, one may not cause death, for that would be a killing, a “doing;” but one may fail to prevent death, allow (in the narrow sense) death to occur, enable another to cause death, redirect a life-threatening item from many to one, or accelerate a death about to happen anyway, if good enough consequences are in the offing. As with the Doctrine of Double Effect, how plausible one finds these applications of the doctrine of doing and allowing will determine how plausible one finds this cause-based view of human agency. A third kind of agent-centered deontology can be obtained by simply conjoining the other two agent-centered views (Hurd 1994). This view would be that agency in the relevant sense requires both intending and causing (i.e., acting) (Moore 2008). On this view, our agent-relative obligations do not focus on causings or intentions separately; rather, the content of such obligations is focused on intended causings. For example, our deontological obligation with respect to human life is neither an obligation not to kill nor an obligation not to intend to kill; rather, it is an obligation not to murder, that is, to kill in execution of an intention to kill. By requiring both intention and causings to constitute human agency, this third view avoids the seeming overbreadth of our obligations if either intention or action alone marked such agency. Suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to do some action such as kill an innocent –is that obligation breached by a merely negligent killing, so that we deserve the serious blame of having breached such a categorical norm (Hurd 1994)? (Of course, one might be somewhat blameworthy on consequentialist grounds (Hurd 1995), or perhaps not blameworthy at all (Moore and Hurd 2011).) Alternatively, suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to intend to kill—does that mean we could not justify forming such an intention when good consequences would be the result, and when we are sure we cannot act so as to fulfill such intention (Hurd 1994)? If our agent-relative obligation is neither of these alone, but is rather, that we are not to kill in execution of an intention to kill, both such instances of seeming overbreadth in the reach of our obligations, are avoided. Whichever of these three agent-centered theories one finds most plausible, they each suffer from some common problems. A fundamental worry is the moral unattractiveness of the focus on self that is the nerve of any agent-centered deontology. The importance of each person’s agency to himself/herself has a narcissistic flavor to it that seems unattractive to many. It seemingly justifies each of us keeping our own moral house in order even at the expense of the world becoming much worse. The worry is not that agent-centered deontology is just another form of egoism, according to which the content of one’s duties exclusively concern oneself; even so, the character of agent-relative duties is such that they betoken an emphasis on self that is unattractive in the same way that such emphasis makes egoism unattractive. Secondly, many find the distinctions invited by the Doctrine of Double Effect and the (five versions of the) Doctrine of Doing and Allowing to be either morally unattractive or conceptually incoherent. Such critics find the differences between intending/foreseeing, causing/omitting, causing/allowing, causing/enabling, causing/redirecting, causing/accelerating to be morally insignificant. (On act/omission (Rachels 1975); on doing/allowing (Kagan 1989); on intending/foreseeing (Bennett 1981; Davis 1984).) They urge, for example, that failing to prevent a death one could easily prevent is as blameworthy as causing a death, so that a morality that radically distinguishes the two is implausible. Alternatively, such critics urge on conceptual grounds that no clear distinctions can be drawn in these matters, that foreseeing with certainty is indistinguishable from intending (Bennett 1981), that omitting is one kind of causing (Schaffer 2012), and so forth. Thirdly, there is the worry about “avoision.” By casting our categorical obligations in such agent-centered terms, one invites a kind of manipulation that is legalistic and Jesuitical, what Leo Katz dubs “avoision” (Katz 1996). Some think, for example, that one can transform a prohibited intention into a permissible predictive belief (and thus escape intention-focused forms of agent-relative duty) by the simple expedient of finding some other end with which to motivate the action in question. Such criticisms of the agent-centered view of deontology drive most who accept their force away from deontology entirely and to some form of consequentialism. Alternatively, some of such critics are driven to patient-centered deontology, which we discuss immediately below. Yet still other of such critics attempt to articulate yet a fourth form of agent-centered deontology. This might be called the “control theory of agency.” On this view, our agency is invoked whenever our choices could have made a difference. This cuts across the intention/foresight, act/omission, and doing/allowing distinctions, because in all cases we controlled what happened through our choices (Frey 1995). Yet as an account of deontology, this seems worrisomely broad. It disallows consequentialist justifications whenever: we foresee the death of an innocent; we omit to save, where our saving would have made a difference and we knew it; where we remove a life-saving device, knowing the patient will die. If deontological norms are so broad in content as to cover all these foreseeings, omittings, and allowings, then good consequences (such as a net saving of innocent lives) are ineligible to justify them. This makes for a wildly counterintuitive deontology: surely I can, for example, justify not throwing the rope to one (and thus omit to save him) in order to save two others equally in need. This breadth of obligation also makes for a conflict-ridden deontology: by refusing to cabin our categorical obligations by the distinctions of the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, situations of conflict between our stringent obligations proliferate in a troublesome way (Anscombe 1962). 2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories A second group of deontological moral theories can be classified, as patient-centered, as distinguished from the agent-centered version of deontology just considered. These theories are rights-based rather than duty-based; and some versions purport to be quite agent-neutral in the reasons they give moral agents. All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people’s rights. An illustrative version posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one’s consent. Such a core right is not to be confused with more discrete rights, such as the right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a right against being used by another for the user’s or others’ benefit. More specifically, this version of patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the using of another’s body, labor, and talent without the latter’s consent. One finds this notion expressed, albeit in different ways, in the work of the so-called Right Libertarians (e.g., Robert Nozick, Eric Mack), but also in the works of the Left-Libertarians as well (e.g., Michael Otsuka, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne) (Nozick 1974; Mack 2000; Steiner 1994; Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka 2005). On this view, the scope of strong moral duties—those that are the correlatives of others’ rights—is jurisdictionally limited and does not extend to resources for producing the Good that would not exist in the absence of those intruded upon—that is, their bodies, labors, and talents. In addition to the Libertarians, others whose views include this prohibition on using others include Quinn, Kamm, Alexander, Ferzan, Gauthier, and Walen (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2016; Alexander and Ferzan 2009, 2012; Gauthier 1986; Walen 2014, 2016). Just as do agent-centered theories, so too do patient-centered theories (such as that forbidding the using of another) seek to explain common intuitions about such classic hypothetical cases as Trolley and Transplant (or Fat Man) (Thomson 1985). In Trolley, a runaway trolley will kill five workers unless diverted to a siding where it will kill one worker. Most people regard it as permissible and perhaps mandatory to switch the trolley to the siding. By contrast, in Transplant, where a surgeon can kill one healthy patient and transplant his organs to five dying patients, thereby saving their lives, the universal reaction is condemnation. (The same is by-and-large true in Fat Man, where the runaway trolley cannot be switched off the main track but can be stopped before reaching the five workers by pushing a fat man into its path, resulting in his death.) The injunction against using arguably accounts for these contrasting reactions. After all, in each example, one life is sacrificed to save five. Yet there appears to be a difference in the means through which the net four lives are saved. In Transplant (and Fat Man), the doomed person is used to benefit the others. They could not be saved in the absence of his body. In Trolley, on the other hand, the doomed victim is not used. The workers would be saved whether or not he is present on the second track. Notice, too, that this patient-centered libertarian version of deontology handles Trolley, Transplant et al. differently from how they are handled by agent-centered versions. The latter focus on the agent’s mental state or on whether the agent acted or caused the victim’s harm. The patient-centered theory focuses instead on whether the victim’s body, labor, or talents were the means by which the justifying results were produced. So one who realizes that by switching the trolley he can save five trapped workers and place only one in mortal danger—and that the danger to the latter is not the means by which the former will be saved—acts permissibly on the patient-centered view if he switches the trolley even if he does so with the intention of killing the one worker. Switching the trolley is causally sufficient to bring about the consequences that justify the act—the saving of net four workers—and it is so even in the absence of the one worker’s body, labor, or talents. (The five would be saved if the one escaped, was never on the track, or did not exist.) By contrast, on the intent and intended action versions of agent-centered theories, the one who switches the trolley does not act permissibly if he acts with the intention to harm the one worker. (This could be the case, for example, when the one who switches the trolley does so to kill the one whom he hates, only knowing that he will thereby save the other five workmen.) On the patient-centered version, if an act is otherwise morally justifiable by virtue of its balance of good and bad consequences, and the good consequences are achieved without the necessity of using anyone’s body, labor, or talents without that person’s consent as the means by which they are achieved, then it is morally immaterial (to the permissibility of the act but not to the culpability of the actor) whether someone undertakes that act with the intention to achieve its bad consequences. (This is true, of course, only so long as the concept of using does not implicitly refer to the intention of the user) (Alexander 2016). And in assessing the culpability of risky conduct, any good consequences must be discounted, not only by the perceived risk that they will not occur, but also by the perceived risk that they will be brought about by a using; for any such consequences, however good they otherwise are, cannot be considered in determining the permissibility and, derivatively, the culpability of acts (Alexander 2016). Patient-centered deontologists handle differently other stock examples of the agent-centered deontologist. Take the acceleration cases as an example. When all will die in a lifeboat unless one is killed and eaten; when Siamese twins are conjoined such that both will die unless the organs of one are given to the other via an operation that kills the first; when all of a group of soldiers will die unless the body of one is used to hold down the enemy barbed wire, allowing the rest to save themselves; when a group of villagers will all be shot by a blood-thirsty tyrant unless they select one of their numbers to slake the tyrants lust for death—in all such cases, the causing/accelerating-distinguishing agent-centered deontologists would permit the killing but the usings-focused patient-centered deontologist would not. (For the latter, all killings are merely accelerations of death.) The restriction of deontological duties to usings of another raises a sticky problem for those patient-centered deontological theories that are based on the core right against using: how can they account for the prima facie wrongs of killing, injuring, and so forth when done not to use others as means, but for some other purpose or for no purpose at all? The answer is that such patient-centered deontological constraints must be supplemented by consequentialist-derived moral norms to give an adequate account of morality. Killing, injuring, and so forth will usually be unjustifiable on a consequentialist calculus, especially if everyone’s interests are given equal regard. It is when killing and injuring are otherwise justifiable that the deontological constraint against using has its normative bite over and against what is already prohibited by consequentialism. (This narrowness of patient-centered deontology makes it counterintuitive to agent-centered deontologists, who regard prohibitions on killing of the innocent, etc., as paradigmatically deontological.) The patient-centered version of deontology is aptly labeled libertarian in that it is not plausible to conceive of not being aided as being used by the one not aiding. Using is an action, not a failure to act. More generally, it is counterintuitive to many to think that any of us have a right to be aided. For if there were a strong (that is, enforceable or coercible) duty to aid others, such that, for example, A had a duty to aid X, Y, and Z; and if A could more effectively aid X, Y, and Z by coercing B and C to aid them (as is their duty), then A would have a duty to “use” B and C in this way. For these reasons, any positive duties will not be rights-based ones on the view here considered; they will be consequentially-justified duties that can be trumped by the right not to be coerced to perform them. Patient-centered deontological theories are often conceived in agent-neutral reason-giving terms. John has a right to the exclusive use of his body, labor, and talents, and such a right gives everyone equal reason to do actions respecting it. But this aspect of patient-centered deontological theories gives rise to a particularly virulent form of the so-called paradox of deontology (Scheffler 1988; Heuer 2011)—that if respecting Mary’s and Susan’s rights is as important morally as is protecting John’s rights, then why isn’t violating John’s rights permissible (or even obligatory) when doing so is necessary to protect Mary’s and Susan’s rights from being violated by others? Patient-centered deontological theories might arguably do better if they abandoned their pretense of being agent-neutral. They could conceive of rights as giving agent-relative reasons to each actor to refrain from doing actions violative of such rights. Take the core right against being used without one’s consent hypothesized earlier. The correlative duty is not to use another without his consent. If such duty is agent-relative, then the rights-based deontologist (no less than the agent-centered deontologist) has the conceptual resources to answer the paradox of deontology. That is, each of us may not use John, even when such using of John would minimize usings of John by others in the future. Such duties are personal to each of us in that we may not justify our violating such a duty now by preventing others’ similar violations in the future. Such personal duties are agent-centered in the sense that the agency of each person is central to the duties of each person, so that your using of another now cannot be traded off against other possible usings at other times by other people. Patient-centered deontologies are thus arguably better construed to be agent-relative in the reasons they give. Even so construed, such deontologies join agent-centered deontologies in facing the moral (rather than the conceptual) versions of the paradox of deontology. For a critic of either form of deontology might respond to the categorical prohibition about using others as follows: If usings are bad, then are not more usings worse than fewer? And if so, then is it not odd to condemn acts that produce better states of affairs than would occur in their absence? Deontologists of either stripe can just deny that wrong acts on their account of wrongness can be translated into bad states of affairs. Two wrong acts are not “worse” than one. Such wrongs cannot be summed into anything of normative significance. After all, the victim of a rights-violating using may suffer less harm than others might have suffered had his rights not been violated; yet one cannot, without begging the question against deontological constraints, argue that therefore no constraint should block minimizing harm. That is, the

Jul 2, 2020 — Immanuel Kant and Henry Sidgwick are towering figures in the history of moral philosophy. Kant’s views on ethics continue to be discussed and studied in detail not only in philosophy, but also theology, political science, and legal theory. Meanwhile, Sidgwick is emerging as the philosopher within the utilitarian tradition who merits the same meticulous treatment that Kant receives. As champions of deontology and consequentialism respectively, Kant and Sidgwick disagree on many important issues. However, close examination reveals a surprising amount of consensus on various topics including moral psychology, moral epistemology, and moral theology. This book presents points of agreement and disagreement in the writings of these two giants of philosophical ethics. The chapters will stimulate discussions among moral theorists and historians of philosophy by applying cutting-edge scholarship on each philosopher to shed light on some of the more perplexing arguments and views of the other, and by uncovering and examining points of agreement between Sidgwick and Kant as possible grounds for greater convergence in contemporary moral philosophy. This is the first full-length volume to investigate Sidgwick and Kant side by side. It will be of major interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy and its history.

Jul 2, 2020 — Immanuel Kant and Henry Sidgwick are towering figures in the history of moral philosophy. Kant’s views on ethics continue to be discussed and studied in detail not only in philosophy, but also theology, political science, and legal theory. Meanwhile, Sidgwick is emerging as the philosopher within the utilitarian tradition who merits the same meticulous treatment that Kant receives. As champions of deontology and consequentialism respectively, Kant and Sidgwick disagree on many important issues. However, close examination reveals a surprising amount of consensus on various topics including moral psychology, moral epistemology, and moral theology. This book presents points of agreement and disagreement in the writings of these two giants of philosophical ethics. The chapters will stimulate discussions among moral theorists and historians of philosophy by applying cutting-edge scholarship on each philosopher to shed light on some of the more perplexing arguments and views of the other, and by uncovering and examining points of agreement between Sidgwick and Kant as possible grounds for greater convergence in contemporary moral philosophy. This is the first full-length volume to investigate Sidgwick and Kant side by side. It will be of major interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy and its history.

Apr 15, 2020 — What makes something right or wrong? One answer comes from the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who is considered the founder of an ethical theory called deontology. Deontology comes from the Greek word deon, meaning duty. It holds, quite simply, that actions are good or bad based on whether they fulfil universal moral duties. For a deeper dive, visit https://ethics.org.au/ethics-unboxed/ and subscribe to our free 5-week introduction to ethics course. // ABOUT THE ETHICS CENTRE The Ethics Centre is an independent not-for-profit that advocates for a more ethical society. A team of innovators, thought leaders and conveners of people and ideas, we deliver a range of services including original programs, consulting, leadership and an ethics helpline designed to bring ethics to the centre of everyday life. Across our work, we aim to diagnose, prevent and cure the sources of ethical failure, to increase ethical literacy through education and information, and develop tools to empower good decision making. The Centre’s programs are recognised for stimulating public awareness and understanding, creating a space for open, honest and often difficult conversations. This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Ethics Centre, and we’re committed to educating, engaging and informing for a better world for the 30 years to come. Watch more videos in our playlist: http://ow.ly/1G3b50yw5MR // SOCIAL MEDIA Follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethicscentre Twitter: https://twitter.com/ethics_centre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethics_centre LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-ethics-centre // Copyright Notice © The Ethics Centre 2020. This video may be freely used by individuals for their own personal use and, to the extent not already permitted by relevant copyright law, by non-profit educational institutions for educational purposes. Permission is granted on the condition that attribution is given to The Ethics Centre, and a link is included to our website (www.ethics.org.au). Please contact The Ethics Centre ([email protected]) if you would like to use or license our materials in any other way

Apr 1, 2019 — The Natures of Moral Acts - Volume 5 Issue 1