Responding Appropriately to the Impersonal Good
A promising strategy to make progress in the debate between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral theories is to unravel the background assumptions of the respective views and discuss their plausibility. This paper discusses a background assumption of consequentialism that has not been not...
| Published in: | Ethical theory and moral practice |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2019]
|
| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
|
| RelBib Classification: | NCA Ethics VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Non-consequentialism
B Appropriate responses B Complex goods B Consequentialism B Impersonal good |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | A promising strategy to make progress in the debate between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral theories is to unravel the background assumptions of the respective views and discuss their plausibility. This paper discusses a background assumption of consequentialism that has not been noticed so far. Consequentialists claim that morality is about maximizing the impersonal good, and the background assumption is that an appropriate response to the impersonal good is necessarily a response to the impersonal good as a whole. In this paper, I argue that we should understand the impersonal good as a complex good, and that an appropriate responses to a complex good need not be a response to that good as whole. This constitutes a novel objection against consequentialism. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-019-10020-y |