Does consequentialism demand too much?
Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 13, no. 3, 1982, pp. 239–254
Abstract
This essay examines three recent attempts to justify the view that agents are sometimes permitted to pursue their own projects rather than the overall good. The first, by David Heyd, argues that reasons to promote overall human welfare and reasons for pursuing one’s own ends are incommensurable. The second, by Thomas Nagel, argues that the satisfaction of adopted desires generates only agent-relative reasons, not agent-neutral ones. The third, by Samuel Scheffler, argues that a moral view must grant agents a prerogative to promote non-optimal outcomes, thereby acknowledging the natural independence of the personal point of view. However, each of these arguments is ultimately inadequate. The essay concludes that if the common belief that consequentialism demands too much cannot be defended, then it may be necessary to reconsider whether our intuitions on this matter are actually correct. – AI-generated abstract
Quotes from this work
The objection that consequentialism demands too much is accepted uncritically by almost all of us; most moral philosophers introduce permission to perform nonoptimal acts without even a word in its defend. But the mere fact that our intuitions support some moral feature hardly constitutes in itself adequate philosophical justification. If we are to go beyond mere intuition mongering, we must search for deeper foundations. We must display the reasons for limiting the requirement to pursue the good.