Friday, February 17, 2017

Consequentialism

Consequentialism First published Tue May 20, 2003; substantive revision Thu Feb 9, 2006 Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind. Entries* 1. Classic Utilitarianism * 2. What is Consequentialism? * 3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms * 4. Which Consequences? Actual vs. Expected Consequentialisms * 5. Consequences of What? Rights, Relativity, and Rules * 6. Consequences for Whom? Limiting the Demands of Morality * 7. Arguments for Consequentialism * Other Internet Reources * Related Entries 1. Classic Utilitarianism The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism, whose classic proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and Henry Sidgwick (1907). (For predecessors, see Schneewind 1990.) Classic utilitarians held hedonistic act consequentialism. Act consequentialism is the claim that an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1-2.) Hedonism then claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that pain is the only intrinsic bad. Together these claims imply that an act is morally right if and only if that act causes "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," as the common slogan says. Classic utilitarianism is consequentialist as opposed to deontological because of what it denies. It denies that moral rightness depends directly on anything other than consequences, such as whether the agent promised in the past to do the act now. Of course, the fact that the agent promised to do the act might indirectly affect the act's consequences if breaking the promise will make other people unhappy. Nonetheless, according to classic utilitarianism, what makes it morally wrong to break the promise is its effects on those other people rather than the fact that the agent promised in the past. Since classic utilitarianism reduces all morally relevant factors (Kagan 1998, 17-22) to consequences, it might appear simple. However, classic utilitarianism is actually a complex combination of many distinct claims, including the following claims about the moral rightness of acts: Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act). Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences). Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself (as opposed to the consequences of the agent's motive, of a rule or practice that covers other acts of the same kind, and so on). Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to other features of the consequences). Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on the pleasures and pains in the consequences (as opposed to other goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and so on). Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo). Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is some function of the values of parts of those consequences (as opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences). Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the total net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average net good per person). Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, present people, or any other limited group). Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count count equally). Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer). These claims could be clarified, supplemented, and subdivided further. What matters here is just that these claims are logically independent, so a moral theorist could consistently accept some of them without accepting others. Yet classic utilitarians accepted them all. That fact makes classic utilitarianism a more complex theory than it might appear at first sight. It also makes classic utilitarianism subject to attack from many angles. Persistent opponents posed plenty of problems for classic utilitarianism. Each objection led some utilitarians to give up some of the original claims of classic utilitarianism. By dropping one or more of those claims, descendants of utilitarianism can construct a wide variety of moral theories. Advocates of these theories often call them consequentialism rather than utilitarianism so that their theories will not be subject to refutation by association with the classic utilitarian theory. 2. What is Consequentialism? This array of alternatives raises the question of which moral theories count as consequentialist (as opposed to deontological), and why. In actual usage, the term ’consequentialism‘ seems to be used as a family resemblance term to refer to any descendant of classic utilitarianism that remains close enough to its ancestor in the important respects. Of course, different philosophers see different respects as the important ones. Hence, there is no agreement on which theories count as consequentialist under this definition. To resolve this vagueness, we need to determine which of the various claims of classic utilitarianism are essential to consequentialism. One claim seems clearly necessary. Any consequentialist theory must accept the claim that I labeled ‘consequentialism’, namely, that certain normative properties depend only on consequences. If that claim is dropped, the theory ceases to be consequentialist. It is less clear whether that claim by itself is sufficient to make a theory consequentialist. Several philosophers assert that a moral theory should not be classified as consequentialist unless it is agent-neutral (McNaughton and Rawling 1991, Howard-Snyder 1994, Pettit 1997). This narrower definition is motivated by the fact that many self-styled critics of consequentialism argue against agent-neutrality. Other philosophers prefer a broader definition that does not require a moral theory to be agent-neutral in order to be consequentialist (Bennett 1989; Broome 1991, 5-6; and Skorupski 1995). Criticisms of agent-neutrality can then be understood as directed against one part of classic utilitarianism that need not be adopted by every moral theory that is consequentialist. Moreover, they argue, the narrower definition conflates independent claims and obscures a crucial commonality between agent-neutral consequentialism and other moral theories that focus exclusively on consequences, such as moral egoism and recent self-styled consequentialists who allow agent-relativity into their theories of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001, 2003). A definition solely in terms of consequences might seem too broad, because it includes absurd theories such as the theory that an act is morally right if it increases the number of goats in Texas. Of course, such theories are implausible. Still, it is not implausible to call them consequentialist, since they do look only at consequences. The implausibility of one version of consequentialism does not make consequentialism implausible in general, since other versions of consequentialism still might be plausible. Besides, anyone who wants to pick out a smaller set of moral theories that excludes this absurd theory may talk about evaluative consequentialism, which is the claim that moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences. Then those who want to talk about the even smaller group of moral theories that accepts both evaluative consequentialism and agent-neutrality may describe them as agent-neutral evaluative consequentialism. If anyone still insists on calling these smaller groups of theories by the simple name, ‘consequentialism’, this narrower usage will not affect any substantive issue. What matters is only that we get clear about exactly which claims are at stake when someone supports or criticizes what they call “consequentialism”. Then we can ask whether each objection really refutes that particular claim. 3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms From the start, the hedonism in classic utilitarianism was treated with contempt. Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill argued that hedonism lowers the value of human life to the level of animals, because it implies that, as Bentham said, a simple game (such as push-pin) is as good as poetry if the game creates as much pleasure. Quantitative hedonists sometimes respond that great poetry almost always creates more pleasure than trivial games (or sex and drugs and rock-and-roll), because the pleasures of poetry are more certain, durable, fecund, and so on. Mill used a different strategy to avoid calling push-pin as good as poetry. He distinguished higher and lower qualities of pleasures according to the preferences of people who have experienced both kinds (Mill 1861, 56; compare Hutcheson 1755, 421-23). This qualitative hedonism has been subjected to much criticism, including charges that it is incoherent and does not count as hedonism (Moore 1903, 80-81; cf. Feldman 1997, 106-24). Even if qualitative hedonism is coherent and is a kind of hedonism, it still might not seem plausible. Some critics argue that not all pleasures are valuable, since, for example, there is no value in the pleasures of a sadist while whipping a victim. Other opponents object that not only pleasures are intrinsically valuable, because other things are valuable independently of whether they lead to pleasure or avoid pain. For example, my love for my wife does not seem to become less valuable when I get less pleasure from her because she contracts some horrible disease. Similarly, freedom seems valuable even when it creates anxiety, and even when it is freedom to do something (such as leave one's country) that one does not want to do. Again, many people value knowledge of other galaxies regardless of whether this knowledge will create pleasure or avoid pain. These points against hedonism are often supplemented with the story of the experience machine found in Nozick (1974, 42-45; cf. the movie, The Matrix). People on this machine believe they are surrounded by friends, winning Olympic gold medals and Nobel prizes, having sex with their favorite lovers, or doing whatever gives them the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. Although they have no real friends or lovers and actually accomplish nothing, people on the experience machine get just as much pleasure as if their beliefs were true. Moreover, they feel no (or little) pain. Assuming that the machine is reliable, it would seem irrational not to hook oneself up to this machine if pleasure and pain were all that mattered, as hedonists claim. Since it does not seem irrational to refuse to hook oneself up to this machine, hedonism seems inadequate. The reason is that hedonism overlooks the value of real friendship, knowledge, freedom, and achievements, all of which are lacking for deluded people on the experience machine. Some hedonists claim that this objection rests on a misinterpretation of hedonism. If hedonists see pleasure and pain as sensations, then a machine might be able to reproduce those sensations. However, we can also say that a mother is pleased that her daughter gets good grades. Such propositional pleasure occurs only when the state of affairs in which the person takes pleasure exists (that is, when the daughter actually gets good grades). But the relevant states of affairs would not really exist if one were hooked up to the experience machine. Hence, hedonists who value propositional pleasure rather than sensational pleasure can deny that more pleasure is achieved by hooking oneself up to such an experience machine (Feldman 1997, 79-105; see also Tannsjo 1998 and Feldman 2004 for more on hedonism). A related position rests on the claim that what is good is desire satisfaction or the fulfillment of preferences; and what is bad is the frustration of desires or preferences. What is desired or preferred is usually not a sensation but is, rather, a state of affairs, such as having a friend or accomplishing a goal. If a person desires or prefers to have true friends and true accomplishments and not to be deluded, then hooking this person up to the experience machine need not maximize desire satisfaction. Utilitarians who adopt this theory of value can then claim that an agent morally ought to do an act if and only if that act maximizes desire satisfaction or preference fulfillment, regardless of whether the act causes sensations of pleasure. This position is usually described as preference utilitarianism. Preference utilitarianism is often criticized on the grounds that some preferences are misinformed, crazy, horrendous, or trivial. I might prefer to drink the liquid in a glass because I think that it is beer, though it really is acid. Or I might prefer to die merely because I am clinically depressed. Or I might prefer to torture children. Or I might prefer to spend my life learning to write as small as possible. In all such cases, opponents of preference utilitarianism can deny that what I prefer is really good. Preference utilitarians can respond by limiting the preferences that make something good, such as by referring to informed desires that do not disappear after therapy (Brandt 1979). However, it is not clear that such qualifications can solve all of the problems for a preference theory of value without making the theory circular by depending on substantive assumptions about which preferences are for good things. Many consequentialists deny that all values can be reduced to any single ground, such as pleasure or desire satisfaction, so they instead adopt a pluralistic theory of value. Moore's ideal utilitarianism, for example, takes into account the values of beauty and truth (or knowledge) in addition to pleasure (Moore 1903, 83-85, 194; 1912). Other consequentialists add the intrinsic values of friendship or love, freedom or ability, life, virtue, and so on. If the recognized values all concern individual welfare, then the theory of value can be called welfarist (Sen 1979). When a welfarist theory of value is combined with the other elements of classic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be called welfarist consequentialism. One non-welfarist theory of value is perfectionism, which claims that certain states make a person's life good without necessarily being good for the person in any way that increases that person's welfare (Hurka 1993, esp. 17). If this theory of value is combined with other elements of classic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be called perfectionist consequentialism or, in deference to its Aristotelian roots, eudaemonistic consequentialism. Similarly, some consequentialists hold that an act is right if and only if it maximizes some function of both happiness and capabilities (Sen 1985, Nussbaum 2000). Disabilities are then seen as bad regardless of whether they are accompanied by pain or loss of pleasure. Or one could hold that an act is right if it maximizes respect for (or minimizes violations of) certain specified moral rights. Such theories are sometimes described as a utilitarianism of rights. This approach could be built into total consequentialism with rights weighed against happiness and other values or, alternatively, the disvalue of rights violations could be lexically ranked prior to any other kind of loss or harm (cf. Rawls 1971, 42). Such a lexical ranking within a consequentialist moral theory would yield the result that nobody is ever justified in violating rights for the sake of happiness or any value other than rights, although it would still allow some rights violations in order to avoid or prevent other rights violations. When consequentialists incorporate a variety of values, they need to rank or weigh each value against the others. This is often difficult. Some consequentialists even hold that certain values are incommensurable or incomparable in that no comparison of their values is possible (Griffin 1986 and Chang 1997). This position allows consequentialists to recognize the possibility of irresolvable moral dilemmas (Sinnott-Armstrong 1988, 81; Railton 2003, 249-91). Pluralism about values also enables consequentialists to handle many of the problems that plague hedonistic utilitarianism. For example, opponents often charge that classical utilitarians cannot explain our obligations to keep promises and not to lie when no pain is caused or pleasure is lost. Whether or not hedonists can meet this challenge, pluralists can hold that knowledge is intrinsically good and/or that false belief is intrinsically bad. Then, if deception causes false beliefs, deception is instrumentally bad, and agents ought not to lie without a good reason, even when lying causes no pain or loss of pleasure. Since lying is an attempt to deceive, to lie is to attempt to do what is morally wrong (in the absence of defeating factors). Similarly, if a promise to do an act is an attempt to make an audience believe that the promiser will do the act, then to break a promise is for a promiser to make false a belief that the promiser created. Although there is more tale to tell, the disvalue of false belief can be part of a consequentialist story about why it is morally wrong to break promises. When such pluralist versions of consequentialism are not welfarist, some philosophers would not call them utilitarian. However, this usage is not uniform, since even non-welfarist views are sometimes called utilitarian. Whatever you call them, the important point is that consequentialism and the other elements of classical utilitarianism are compatible with many different theories about which things are good or valuable. Instead of turning pluralist, some consequentialists foreswear the aggregation of values. Classic utilitarianism added up the values within each part of the consequences to determine which total set of consequences has the most value in it. One could, instead, aggregate goods for each individual but not aggregate goods of separate individuals (Roberts 2002). Or one could give up aggregation altogether and just rank total sets of consequences or total worlds created by acts without breaking those worlds down into valuable parts. One motive for this move is Moore's principle of organic unity (Moore 1903, 27-36). For example, even if punishment of a criminal causes pain, a consequentialist can hold that a world with both the crime and the punishment is better than a world with the crime but not the punishment. Similarly, a world might seem better when people do not get pleasures that they do not deserve. Cases like these lead some consequentialists to deny that moral rightness is any function of the values of particular effects of acts. Instead, they compare the whole world (or total set of consequences) that results from an action with the whole world that results from not doing that action. If the former is better, then the action is morally right (J.J.C. Smart 1973, 32; Feldman 1997, 17-35). This approach can be called holistic consequentialism or world utilitarianism. Another way to incorporate relations among values is to consider distribution. Compare one outcome where most people are destitute but a few lucky people have extremely large amounts of goods with another outcome that contains slightly less total goods but where every person has nearly the same amount of goods. Egalitarian critics of classical utilitarianism argue that the latter outcome is better, so more than the total amount of good matters. Traditional hedonistic utilitarians who prefer the latter outcome often try to justify egalitarian distributions of goods by appealing to a principle of diminishing marginal utility. Other consequentialists, however, incorporate a more robust commitment to equality. Early on, Sidgwick (1907, 417) responded to such objections by allowing distribution to break ties between other values. More recently, some consequentialists have added some notion of fairness (Broome 1991, 192-200) or desert (Feldman 1997, 154-74) to their test of which outcome is best. (See also Kagan 1998, 48-59.) Such consequentialists do not just add up values; they look at patterns. A related issue arises from population change. Imagine that a government considers whether to provide free contraceptives to curb a rise in population. Without free contraceptives, overcrowding will bring hunger, disease, and pain, so each person will be worse off. Still, each new person will have enough pleasure and other goods that the total net utility will increase with the population. Classic utilitarianism focuses on total utility, so it seems to imply that this government should not provide free contraceptives. That seems implausible to many utilitarians. To avoid this result, some utilitarians claim that an act is morally wrong if and only if its consequences contain more pain (or other disvalues) than an alternative, regardless of positive values. This negative utilitarianism implies that the government should provide contraceptives, since that program reduces pain (and other disvalues), even though it also decreases total net pleasure (or good). Unfortunately, negative utilitarianism also seems to imply that the government should painlessly kill everyone it can, since dead people feel no pain (and have no false beliefs, diseases, or disabilities – though killing them does cause loss of ability) (cf. R.N. Smart 1958). A better response is average utilitarianism, which says that the best consequences are those with the highest average utility (cf. Rawls 1971, 161-75). The average utility would be higher with the contraceptive program than without it, so average utilitarianism yields the more plausible result—that the government should adopt the contraceptive program. Critics sometimes charge that the average utility could also be increased by killing the worst off, but this claim is not at all clear, because such killing would put everyone in danger (since, after the worst off are killed, another group becomes the worst off, and then they might be killed next). Still, average utilitarianism faces problems of its own (such as “the mere addition paradox” in Parfit 1984, chap. 19). In any case, all maximizing consequentialists, whether or not they are pluralists, must decide whether moral rightness depends on total good or on average good. A final challenge to consequentialists' accounts of value derives from Geach 1956 and has been pressed recently by Thomson 2001. Thomson argues that “A is a good X” (such as a good poison) does not entail “A is good”, so the term “good” is an attributive adjective and cannot legitimately be used without qualification. On this view, it is senseless to call something good unless this means that it is good for someone or in some respect or for some use or at some activity or as an instance of some kind. Consequentialists are supposed to violate this restriction when they say that the total or average consequences or the world as a whole is good without any such qualification. However, consequentialists can respond either that the term “good” has predicative uses in addition to its attributive uses or that when they call a world or total set of consequences good, they are calling it good for consequences or for a world (Sinnott-Armstrong 2003a). If so, the fact that “good” is often used attributively creates no problem for consequentialists. 4. Which Consequences? Actual vs. Expected Consequentialisms A second set of problems for classic utilitarianism is epistemological. Classic utilitarianism seems to require that agents calculate all consequences of each act for every person for all time. That's impossible. This objection rests on a misinterpretation. Critics assume that the principle of utility is supposed to be used as a decision procedure or guide, that is, as a method that agents consciously apply to acts in advance to help them make choices. However, most classic and contemporary utilitarians and consequentialists do not propose their principles as decision procedures. (Bales 1971) Bentham wrote, “It is not to be expected that this process [his hedonic calculus] should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment.” (1789, Chap. IV, Sec. VI) Mill agreed, “it is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought to conceive it as implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or society at large.” (1861, Chap. II, Par. 19) Sidgwick added, “It is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim.” (1907, 413) Instead, most consequentialists claim that overall utility is the criterion or standard of what is morally right or morally ought to be done. Their theories are intended to spell out the necessary and sufficient conditions for an act to be morally right, regardless of whether the agent can tell in advance whether those conditions are met. Just as the laws of physics govern golf ball flight, but golfers need not calculate physical forces while planning shots; so overall utility can determine which decisions are morally right, even if agents need not calculate utilities while making decisions. If the principle of utility is used as a criterion of the right rather than as a decision procedure, then classical utilitarianism does not require that anyone know the total consequences of anything before making a decision. Furthermore, a utilitarian criterion of right implies that it would not be morally right to use the principle of utility as a decision procedure in cases where it would not maximize utility to try to calculate utilities before acting. Utilitarians regularly argue that most people in most circumstances ought not to try to calculate utilities, because they are too likely to make serious miscalculations that will lead them to perform actions that reduce utility. It is even possible to hold that most agents usually ought to follow their moral intuitions, because these intuitions evolved to lead us to perform acts that maximize utility, at least in likely circumstances (Hare 1981, 46-47). Some utilitarians (Sidgwick 1907, 489-90) suggest that a utilitarian decision procedure may be adopted as an esoteric morality by an elite group that is better at calculating utilities, but utilitarians can, instead, hold that nobody should use the principle of utility as a decision procedure. This move is supposed to make consequentialism self-refuting, according to some opponents. However, there is nothing incoherent about proposing a decision procedure that is separate from one's criterion of the right. Similar distinctions apply in other normative realms. The criterion of a good stock investment is its total return, but the best decision procedure still might be to reduce risk by buying an index fund or blue-chip stocks. Criteria can, thus, be self-effacing without being self-refuting (Parfit 1984, chs. 1 and 4). Others object that this move takes the force out of consequentialism, because it leads agents to ignore consequentialism when they make real decisions. However, a criterion of the right can be useful at a higher level by helping us choose among available decision procedures and refine our decision procedures as circumstances change and we gain more experience and knowledge. Hence, most consequentialists do not mind giving up consequentialism as a direct decision procedure as long as consequences remain the criterion of rightness. If overall utility is the criterion of moral rightness, then it might seem that nobody could know what is morally right. If so, classical utilitarianism leads to moral skepticism. However, utilitarians insist that we can have strong reasons to believe that certain acts reduce utility, even if we have not yet inspected or predicted every consequence of those acts. For example, in normal circumstances, if someone were to torture and kill his children, it is possible that this would maximize utility, but that is very unlikely. Maybe they would have grown up to be mass murders, but it is at least as likely that they would cure serious diseases or do other great things, and it is much more likely that they would have led normally happy (or at least not destructive) lives. So observers as well as agents have adequate reasons to believe that such acts are morally wrong, according to act utilitarianism. In many other cases, it will still be hard to tell whether an act will maximize utility, but that shows only that there are severe limits to our knowledge of what is morally right. That should be neither surprising nor problematic for utilitarians. If utilitarians want their theory to allow more moral knowledge, they can make a different kind of move by turning from actual consequences to expected or expectable consequences. Suppose that Alice finds a runaway teenager who asks for money to get home. Alice wants to help and reasonably believes that buying a bus ticket home for this runaway will help, so she buys a bus ticket and puts the runaway on the bus. Unfortunately, the bus is involved in a freak accident, and the runaway is killed. If actual consequences are what determine moral wrongness, then it was morally wrong for Alice to buy the bus ticket for this runaway. Opponents claim that this result is absurd enough to refute classic utilitarianism. Some utilitarians bite the bullet and say that Alice's act was morally wrong, but it was blameless wrongdoing, because her motives were good, and she was not responsible, given that she could not have foreseen that her act would cause harm. Since this theory makes actual consequences determine moral rightness, it can be called actual consequentialism. Other responses claim that moral rightness depends on foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences, rather than actual ones. Imagine that Bob does not in fact foresee a bad consequence that would make his act wrong if he did foresee it, but that Bob could easily have foreseen this bad consequence if he had been paying attention. Maybe he does not notice the rot on the hamburger he feeds to his kids which makes them sick. If foreseen consequences are what matter, then Bob's act is not morally wrong. If foreseeable consequences are what matter, then Bob's act is morally wrong, because the bad consequences were foreseeable. Now consider Bob's wife, Carol, who notices that the meat is rotten but does not want to have to buy more, so she feeds it to her children anyway, hoping that it will not make them sick; but it does. Carol's act is morally wrong if foreseen or foreseeable consequences are what matter, but not if what matter are intended consequences, because she does not intend to make her children sick. Finally, consider Bob and Carol's son Don, who does not know enough about food to be able to know that eating rotten meat can make people sick. If Don feeds the rotten meat to his little sister, and it makes her sick, then the bad consequences are not intended, foreseen, or even foreseeable by Don, but those bad results are still objectively likely or probable, unlike the case of Alice. Some philosophers deny that probability can be fully objective, but at least the consequences here are foreseeable by others who are more informed than Don can be at the time. For Don to feed the rotten meat to his sister is, therefore, morally wrong if likely consequences are what matter, but not morally wrong if what matter are foreseen or foreseeable or intended consequences. Consequentialist moral theories that focus on actual or objectively probable consequences are often described as objective consequentialism (Railton 1984). In contrast, consequentialist moral theories that focus on intended or foreseen consequences are usually described as subjective consequentialism. Consequentialist moral theories that focus on reasonably foreseeable consequences are then not subjective insofar as they do not depend on anything inside the actual subject's mind, but they are subjective insofar as they do depend on which consequences this particular subject would foresee if he or she were better informed or more rational. One final solution to these epistemological problems deploys the legal notion of proximate cause. If consequentialists define consequences in terms of what is caused (unlike Sosa 1993), then which future events count as consequences is affected by which notion of causation is used to define consequences. Suppose I give a set of steak knives to a friend. Unforeseeably, when she opens my present, the decorative pattern on the knives somehow reminds her of something horrible that her husband did. This memory makes her so angry that she voluntarily stabs and kills him with one of the knives. She would not have killed her husband if I had given her spoons instead of knives. Did my decision or my act of giving her knives cause her husband's death? Most people (and the law) would say that the cause was her act, not mine. Why? One explanation is that her voluntary act intervened in the causal chain between my act and her husband's death. Moreover, even if she did not voluntarily kill him, but instead she slipped and fell on the knives, thereby killing herself, my gift would still not be a cause of her death, because the coincidence of her falling intervened between my act and her death. The point is that, when voluntary acts and coincidences intervene in certain causal chains, then the results are not seen as caused by the acts further back in the chain of necessary conditions (Hart and Honoré 1985). Now, if we assume that an act must be such a proximate cause of a harm in order for that harm to be a consequence of that act, then consequentialists can claim that the moral rightness of that act is determined only by such proximate consequences. This position, which might be called proximate consequentialism, makes it much easier for agents and observers to justify moral judgments of acts because it obviates the need to predict non-proximate consequences in distant times and places. Hence, this move is worth considering, even though it deviates far from traditional consequentialism, which counts not only proximate consequences but all upshots — that is, everything for which the act is a causally necessary condition. 5. Consequences of What? Rights, Relativity, and Rules Another problem for utilitarianism is that it seems to overlook justice and rights. One common illustration is called Transplant. Imagine that each of five patients in a hospital will die without an organ transplant. The patient in Room 1 needs a heart, the patient in Room 2 needs a liver, the patient in Room 3 needs a kidney, and so on. The person in Room 6 is in the hospital for routine tests. Luckily (for them, not for him!), his tissue is compatible with the other five patients, and a specialist is available to transplant his organs into the other five. This operation would save their lives, while killing the "donor". There is no other way to save any of the other five patients (Foot 1966, Thomson 1976; compare related cases in Carritt 1947 and McCloskey 1965). We need to add that the organ recipients will emerge healthy, the source of the organs will remain secret, the doctor won't be caught or punished for cutting up the "donor", and the doctor knows all of this to a high degree of probability (despite the fact that many others will help in the operation). Still, with the right details filled in, it looks as if cutting up the "donor" will maximize utility, since five lives have more utility than one life. If so, then classical utilitarianism implies that it would not be morally wrong for the doctor to perform the transplant and even that it would be morally wrong for the doctor not to perform the transplant. Most people find this result abominable. They take this example to show how bad it can be when utilitarians overlook individual rights, such as the unwilling donor's right to life. Utilitarians can bite the bullet, again. They can deny that it is morally wrong to cut up the "donor" in these circumstances. Of course, doctors still should not cut up their patients in anything close to normal circumstances, but this example is so abnormal that we should not expect our normal moral rules to apply, and we should not trust our moral intuitions, which evolved to fit normal situations (Sprigge 1965). Many utilitarians are happy to reject common moral intuitions in this case, like many others (cf. Singer 1974, Unger 1996, Norcross 1997). Most utilitarians lack such strong stomachs (or teeth), so they modify utilitarianism to bring it in line with common moral intuitions, including the intuition that doctors should not cut up innocent patients. One attempt claims that a killing is worse than a death. The doctor would have to kill the "donor" in order to prevent the deaths of the five patients, but nobody is killed if the five patients die. If one killing is worse than five deaths that do not involve killing, then the world that results from the doctor performing the transplant is worse than the world that results from the doctor not performing the transplant. With this new theory of value, consequentialists can agree with others that it is morally wrong for the doctor to cut up the "donor" in this example. A modified example still seems problematic. Just suppose that the five patients need a kidney, a lung, a heart, and so forth because they were all victims of murder attempts. Then the world will contain the five killings of them if they die, but not if they do not die. Thus, even if killings are worse than deaths that are not killings, the world will still be better overall (because it will contain fewer killings as well as fewer deaths) if the doctor cuts up the "donor" to save the five other patients. But most people still think it would be morally wrong for the doctor to kill the one to prevent the five killings. The reason is that it is not the doctor who kills the five, and the doctor's duty seems to be to reduce the amount of killing that she herself does. In this view, the doctor is not required to promote life or decrease death or even decrease killing by other people. The doctor is, instead, required to honor the value of life by not causing loss of life (cf. Pettit 1997). This kind of case leads some consequentialists to introduce agent-relativity into their theory of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001, 2003). To apply a consequentialist moral theory, we need to compare the world with the transplant to the world without the transplant. If this comparative evaluation must be agent-neutral, then, if an observer judges that the world with the transplant is better, the agent must make the same judgment, or else one of them is mistaken. However, if such evaluations can be agent-relative, then it could be legitimate for an observer to judge that the world with the transplant is better (since it contains fewer killings by anyone), while it is also legitimate for the doctor as agent to judge that the world with the transplant is worse (because it includes a killing by him). In other cases, such as competitions, it might maximize the good from an agent's perspective to do an act, while maximizing the good from an observer's perspective to stop the agent from doing that very act. If such agent-relative value makes sense, then it can be built into consequentialism to produce the claim that an act is morally wrong if and only if the act's consequences include less overall value from the perspective of the agent. This agent-relative consequentialism, plus the claim that the world with the transplant is worse from the perspective of the doctor, could justify the doctor's judgment that it would be morally wrong for him to perform the transplant. A key move here is to adopt the agent's perspective in judging the agent's act. Agent-neutral consequentialists judge all acts from the observer's perspective, so they would judge the doctor's act to be wrong, since the world with the transplant is better from an observer's perspective. In contrast, an agent-relative approach requires observers to adopt the doctor's perspective in judging whether it would be morally wrong for the doctor to perform the transplant. This kind of agent-relative consequentialism is then supposed to capture commonsense moral intuitions in such cases. Agent-relativity is also supposed to solve other problems. W. D. Ross (1930, 34-35) argued that, if breaking a promise created only slightly more happiness overall than keeping the promise, then the agent morally ought to break the promise according to classic utilitarianism. This supposed counterexample cannot be avoided simply by claiming that keeping promises has agent-neutral value, since keeping one promise might prevent someone else from keeping another promise. Still, agent-relative consequentialists can respond that keeping a promise has great value from the perspective of the agent who made the promise and chooses whether or not to keep it, so the world where a promise is kept is better from the agent's perspective than another world where the promise is not kept, unless enough other values override the value of keeping the promise. In this way, agent-relative consequentialists can explain why agents morally ought not to break their promises in just the kind of case that Ross raised. Similarly, critics of utilitarianism often argue that utilitarians cannot be good friends, because a good friend places more weight on the welfare of his or her friends than on the welfare of strangers, but utilitarianism requires impartiality among all people. However, agent-relative consequentialists can assign more weight to the welfare of a friend of an agent when assessing the value of the consequences of that agent's acts. In this way, consequentialists try to capture common moral intuitions about the duties of friendship. One final variation still causes trouble. Imagine that the doctor herself wounded the five people who need organs. If the doctor does not save their lives, then she will have killed them herself. In this case, even if the doctor can disvalue killings by herself more than killings by other people, the world still seems better from her own perspective if she performs the transplant. Critics will object that it is, nonetheless, morally wrong for the doctor to perform the transplant. Many people will not find this intuition as clear as in the other cases, but those who do find it immoral for the doctor to perform the transplant even in this case will want to modify consequentialism in some other way in order to yield the desired judgment. This problem cannot be solved by building rights or fairness or desert into the theory of value. The five do not deserve to die, and they do deserve their lives, just as much as the one does. Each option violates someone's right not to be killed and is unfair to someone. So consequentialists need more than just new values if they want to avoid endorsing this transplant. One option is to go indirect. A direct consequentialist holds that the moral qualities of something depend only on the consequences of that very thing. Thus, a direct consequentialist about motives holds that the moral qualities of a motive depend on the consequences of that motive. A direct consequentialist about virtues holds that the moral qualities of a character trait (such as whether or not it is a moral virtue) depend on the consequences of that trait (Driver 2001a, Hurka 2001, Jamieson 2005). A direct consequentialist about acts holds that the moral qualities of an act depend on the consequences of that act. Someone who adopts direct consequentialism about everything is a global direct consequentialist (Pettit and Smith 2000). In contrast, an indirect consequentialist holds that the moral qualities of something depend on the consequences of something else. One indirect version of consequentialism is motive consequentialism, which claims that the moral qualities of an act depend on the consequences of the motive of that act (compare Adams 1976). Another indirect version is virtue consequentialism, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends on whether it stems from or expresses a state of character that maximizes good consequences and, hence, is a virtue. The most common indirect consequentialism is rule consequentialism, which makes the moral rightness of an act depend on the consequences of a rule. Since a rule is an abstract entity, a rule by itself strictly has no consequences. Still, obedience rule consequentialists can ask what would happen if everybody obeyed a rule or what would happen if everybody violated a rule. They might argue, for example, that theft is morally wrong because it would be disastrous if everybody broke a rule against theft. Often, however, it does not seem morally wrong to break a rule even though it would cause disaster if everybody broke it. For example, if everybody broke the rule “Have some children”, then our species would die out, but that hardly shows it is morally wrong not to have any children. Luckily, our species will not die out if everyone is permitted not to have children, since enough people want to have children. Thus, instead of asking, “What would happen if everybody did that?”, rule consequentialists should ask, “What would happen if everybody were permitted to do that?” People are permitted to do what violates no accepted rule, so asking what would happen if everybody were permitted to do an act is just the flip side of asking what would happen if people accepted a rule that forbids that act. Such acceptance rule consequentialists then claim that an act is morally wrong if and only if it violates a rule whose acceptance has better consequences than the acceptance of any incompatible rule. In some accounts, a rule is accepted when it is built into individual consciences (Brandt 1992). Other rule utilitarians, however, require that moral rules be publicly known (Gert 2005; cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2003b) or built into public institutions (Rawls 1955). Then they hold what can be called public acceptance rule consequentialism: an act is morally wrong if and only if it violates a rule whose public acceptance maximizes the good. The indirectness of such rule utilitarianism provides a way to remain consequentialist and yet capture the common moral intuition that it is immoral to perform the transplant in the above situation. Suppose people generally accepted a rule that allows a doctor to transplant organs from a healthy person without consent when the doctor believes that this transplant will maximize utility. Widely accepting this rule would lead to many transplants that do not maximize utility, since doctors (like most people) are prone to errors in predicting consequences and weighing utilities. Moreover, if the rule is publicly known, then patients will fear that they might be used as organ sources, so they would be less likely to go to a doctor when they need one. The medical profession depends on trust that this public rule would undermine. For such reasons, some rule utilitarians conclude that it would not maximize utility for people generally to accept a rule that allows doctors to transplant organs from unwilling donors. If this claim is correct, then rule utilitarianism implies that it is morally wrong for a particular doctor to use an unwilling donor, even for a particular transplant that would have better consequences than any alternative even from the doctor's own perspective. Common moral intuition is thereby preserved. Rule utilitarianism faces several potential counterexamples (such as whether public rules allowing slavery could sometimes maximize utlity) and needs to be formulated more precisely (particularly in order to avoid collapsing into act-utilitarianism; cf. Lyons 1965). Such details are discussed in another entry in this encyclopedia (see Hooker on rule-consequentialism). Here I just want to point out that direct consequentialists find it weird to judge a particular act by the consequences of something else (Smart 1956). Why should mistakes by other doctors in other cases make this doctor's act morally wrong, when this doctor is not mistaken in this case? Rule consequentialists can respond that we should not claim special rights or permissions that we are not willing to grant to every other person, and that it is arrogant to think we are less prone to mistakes than other people are. However, this doctor can reply that he is willing to give everyone the right to violate the usual rules in the rare cases when they do know that violating those rules really maximizes utility. Anyway, even if rule utilitarianism accords with some common substantive moral intuitions, it still seems counterintuitive in other ways. This makes it worthwhile to consider how direct consequentialists can bring their views in line with common moral intuitions, and whether they need to do so. 6. Consequences for Whom? Limiting the Demands of Morality Another popular charge is that classic utilitarianism demands too much, because it requires us to do acts that are or should be moral options (neither obligatory nor forbidden). (Scheffler 1982) For example, imagine that my old shoes are serviceable but dirty, so I want a new pair of shoes that costs $100. I could wear my old shoes and give the $100 to a charity that will use my money to save someone else's life. It would seem to maximize utility for me to give the $100 to the charity. If it is morally wrong to do anything other than what maximizes utility, then it is morally wrong for me to buy the shoes. But buying the shoes does not seem morally wrong. It might be morally better to give the money to charity, but such contributions seem supererogatory, that is, above and beyond the call of duty. Of course, there are many more cases like this. When I watch television, I always (or almost always) could do more good by helping others, but it does not seem morally wrong to watch television. When I choose to teach philosophy rather than working for CARE or the Peace Corps, my choice probably fails to maximize utility overall. If we were required to maximize utility, then we would have to make very different choices in many areas of our lives. The requirement to maximize utility, thus, strikes many people as too demanding because it interferes with the personal decisions that most of us feel should be left up to the individual. Some utilitarians respond by arguing that we really are morally required to change our lives so as to do a lot more to increase overall utility (see Kagan 1989, P. Singer 1993, and Unger 1996). Such hard-liners claim that most of what most people do is morally wrong, because most people rarely maximize utility. Some such wrongdoing might be blameless when agents act from innocent or even desirable motives, but it is still supposed to be moral wrongdoing. Opponents of utilitarianism find this claim implausible, but it is not obvious that their counter-utilitarian intuitions are reliable or well-grounded (Murphy 2000, chs. 1-4; cf. Mulgan 2001). Other utilitarians blunt the force of the demandingness objection by limiting utilitarianism to what people morally ought to do. Even if we morally ought to maximize utility, it need not be morally wrong to fail to maximize utility. John Stuart Mill, for example, argued that an act is morally wrong only when both it fails to maximize utility and its agent is liable to punishment for the failure (Mill 1861). It does not always maximize utility to punish people for failing to maximize utility (cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2005). Thus, on this view, it is not always morally wrong to fail to do what one morally ought to do. If Mill is correct about this, then utilitarians can say that we ought to give much more to charity, but we are not required or obliged to do so, and failing to do so is not morally wrong. Many utilitarians still want to avoid the claim that we morally ought to give so much to charity. One way around this claim uses a rule-utilitarian theory of what we morally ought to do. If it costs too much to internalize rules implying that we ought to give so much to charity, then, according to such rule-utilitarianism, it is not true that we ought to give so much to charity (Hooker 2000, ch. 8). Another route follows an agent-relative theory of value. If there is more value in benefiting one's family and friends than there is disvalue in letting strangers die (without killing them), then spending resources on family and friends would maximize the good. A problem is that such consequentialism would seem to imply that we morally ought not to contribute those resources to charity, although such contributions seem at least permissible. More personal leeway could also be allowed by deploying the legal notion of proximate causation. When a starving stranger would stay alive if and only if one contributed to a charity, contributing to the charity still need not be the proximate cause of the stranger's life, and failing to contribute need not be the proximate cause of his or her death. Thus, if an act is morally right when it includes the most net good in its proximate consequences, then it might not be morally wrong either to contribute to the charity or to fail to do so. Yet another way to reach this conclusion is to give up maximization and to hold instead that we morally ought to do what creates enough utility. This position is often described as satisficing consequentialism (Slote 1984). According to satisficing consequentialism, it is not morally wrong to fail to contribute to a charity if one contributes enough to other charities and if the money or time that one could contribute does create enough good, so it is not just wasted. (For criticisms, see Bradley forthcoming.) A related position is progressive consequentialism, which holds that we morally ought to improve the world or make it better than it would be if we did nothing, but we don't have to improve it as much as we can (Elliot and Jamieson, forthcoming). Both satisficing and progressive consequentialism allow us to devote some of our time and money to personal projects that do not maximize overall good. Opponents still object that all such consequentialist theories are misdirected. When I decide to visit a friend instead of working for a charity, I can know that my act is not immoral even if I have not calculated that the visit will create enough overall good or that it will improve the world. These critics hold that friendship requires us to do certain favors for friends without weighing our friends' welfare impartially against the welfare of strangers. Similarly, if I need to choose between saving my drowning wife and saving a drowning stranger, it would be "one thought too many" (Williams 1981) for me to calculate the consequences of each act. I morally should save my wife straightaway without calculating utilities. In response, utilitarians can remind critics that the principle of utility is intended as only a criterion of right and not as a decision procedure, so utilitarianism does not imply that people ought to calculate utilities before acting (Railton 1984). Consequentialists can also allow the special perspective of a friend or spouse to be reflected in agent-relative value assessments (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001, 2003) or probability assessments (Jackson 1991). It remains controversial, however, whether any form of consequentialism can adequately incorporate common moral intuitions about friendship. 7. Arguments for Consequentialism Even if consequentialists can accommodate or explain away common moral intuitions, that might seem only to answer objections without yet giving any positive reason to accept consequentialism. However, most people begin with the presumption that we morally ought to make the world better when we can. The question then is only whether any moral constraints or moral options need to be added to the basic consequentialist factor in moral reasoning. (Kagan 1989, 1998) If no objection reveals any need for anything beyond consequences, then consequences alone seem to determine what is morally right or wrong, just as consequentialists claim. This line of reasoning will not convince opponents who remain unsatisfied by consequentialist responses to objections. Moreover, even if consequentialists do respond adequately to every proposed objection, that would not show that consequentialism is correct or even defensible. It might face new problems that nobody has yet recognized. Even if every possible objection is refuted, we might have no reason to reject consequentialism but still no reason to accept it. In case a positive reason is needed, consequentialists present a wide variety of arguments. One common move attacks opponents. If the only plausible options in moral theory lie on a certain list (say, Kantianism, contractarianism, virtue theory, pluralistic intuitionism, and consequentialism), then consequentialists can argue for their own theory by criticizing the others. This disjunctive syllogism or process of elimination will be only as strong as the objections to the alternatives, and the argument fails if even one competitor survives. Moreover, the argument assumes that the original list is complete. It is hard to see how that assumption could be justified. Consequentialism also might be supported by an inference to the best explanation of our moral intuitions. This argument might surprise those who think of consequentialism as counterintuitive, but in fact consequentialists can explain many moral intutions that trouble deontological theories. Moderate deontologists, for example, often judge that it is morally wrong to kill one person to save five but not morally wrong to kill one person to save a million. They never specify the line between what is morally wrong and what is not morally wrong, and it is hard to imagine any non-arbitrary way for deontologists to justify a cutoff point. In contrast, consequentialists can simply say that the line belongs wherever the benefits outweigh the costs (including any bad side effects). If consequentialists can better explain more common moral intuitions, then consequentialism might have more explanatory coherence overall, despite being counterintuitive in some cases. (Compare Sidgwick 1907, Book IV, Chap. III.) And even if act consequentialists cannot argue in this way, it still might work for rule consequentialists (such as Hooker 2000). Consequentialists also might be supported by deductive arguments from abstract moral intuitions. Sidgwick (1907, Book III, Chap. XIII) seemed to think that the principle of utility follows from very general principles of rationality and universalizability. Other consequentialists are more skeptical about moral intuitions, so they seek foundations outside morality, either in non-normative facts or in non-moral norms. Mill (1861) is infamous for his “proof” of the principle of utlity from empirical observations about what we desire (cf. Sayre-McCord 2001). In contrast, Hare (1963, 1981) tries to derive his version of utilitarianism from substantively neutral accounts of morality, of moral language, and of rationality. Yet another argument for a kind of consequentialism is contractarian. Harsanyi (1977, 1978) argues that all informed, rational people whose impartiality is ensured because they do not know their place in society would favor a kind of consequentialism. Broome (1991) elaborates and extends Harsanyi's argument. Other forms of arguments have also been invoked on behalf of consequentialism (e.g. Cummiskey 1996, P. Singer 1993). However, each of these arguments has also been subjected to criticisms. Even if none of these arguments proves consequentialism, there still might be no adequate reason to deny consequentialism. We might have no reason either to deny consequentialism or to assert it. Consequentialism could then remain a live option even if it is not proven. 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J. 1976. ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’, The Monist, 59: 204-17. * –––. 1994. ‘Goodness and Utilitarianism’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 67, 4: 7-21. * –––. 2001. Goodness and Advice, edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton; Princeton University Press. * Unger, P. 1996. Living High and Letting Die. New York: Oxford University Press. * Williams, B. 1973. ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ in Utilitarianism: For and Against, by J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 77 – 150. * –––. 1981. ‘Persons, Character, and Morality,’ in B. Williams, Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Other Internet Resources * Utilitarianism Resources * Utilitarian Net, Peter Unger, New York University Related Entries Bentham, Jeremy | consequentialism: rule | hedonism | Mill, John Stuart | Moore, George Edward | reasons for action: agent-neutral vs. agent-relative | Sidgwick, Henry Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, "Consequentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Deontological Ethics First published Wed Nov 21, 2007 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 (aretaic [virtue] theories) that — fundamentally, at least — guide and assess what kind of person (in terms of character traits) we are and should be. And within that domain, deontologists — those who subscribe to deontological theories of morality — stand in opposition to consequentialists. * 1. Deontology's Foil: Consequentialism * 2. Deontological Theories o 2.1 Agent-Centered Deontological Theories o 2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories o 2.3 Contractarian Deontological Theories o 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 o 5.1 Making no concessions to consequentialism: a purely deontological rationality? o 5.2 Making no concessions to deontology: a purely consequentialist rationality? * 6. Deontological Moralities and Retributivism * 7. Deontology and the Obligation to Obey the Law * 8. Deontological Theories and Metaethics * Bibliography * 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 — 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 and identify it with pleasure, happiness, desire satisfaction, or “welfare” in some other sense. Others are pluralists regarding the Good. And many believe that how the Good is distributed among persons (or all sentient beings) is itself partly constitutive of the Good. (That is, some consequentialists are egalitarians, maximiners, or prioritarians rather than conventional utilitarians who merely add each person's share of the Good to achieve the Good's maximization.) However much consequentialists differ about what the Good consists in, they all agree that the morally right choices are those that increase 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. Before examining deontological theories and their points of difference from consequentialist theories, it is important to note that there is some dissent from some of the points just made within consequentialism. For example, some consequentialists hold that some aspects of the Good — some valuable states of affairs — are agent-relative rather than agent-neutral (Sen 1982). In other words, some aspects of Ann's Good, although they are part of the overall societal Good, may be achievable only by Ann herself and thus give other agents no reason (or a lesser reason) to achieve them. Moreover, there are some consequentialists who hold that the doing of certain kinds of acts contribute to or detract from the Good not solely in terms of their consequences but also as intrinsically valuable states of affairs in themselves. 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) This latter position does not erase the difference between consequentialism and deontology. For the essence of consequentialism is still here present: an action would be a right only insofar as it maximizes these Good-making, rights-based states of affairs being caused to exist. (Some theorists doubt the coherence of treating the nonviolation of rights as part of the Good — as intrinsic goods.) Consequentialism is frequently criticized for its extreme demandingness. According to critics, 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). Indeed, any act over which an agent has control is grist for consequentialist assessment, including expressions of moral judgments and judgments of truth and falsity. But if being partial to one's projects, family, and friends, or expressing one's judgments of truth, falsity, blame, and praise, is constitutive of the Good, and consequentialism's injunction to maximize the total Good undermines such partiality and expressions, then consequentialism as an action-guiding principle will be self-undermining. Consequentialism would become instead solely a standard of moral assessment and would not play any role in guiding the practical reasoning of agents. On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it seemingly permits — or, more accurately, requires. It seemingly may demand (and thus, of course, permit) that 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, no matter how harmful it is to some. Finally, consequentialism is criticized on the ground that it gives little or no guidance to persons' practical reasoning. The consequences of any act stretch into the distant future, making them essentially unknowable. Although end-of-history assessments are not impossible, the guidance of practically reasoning agents becomes problematic. Although many consequentialists deny these criticisms, others accept them and amend their consequentialism in an attempt to avoid them. 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, though it is not clear that the satisficing move averts the other criticisms. More importantly, it is not clear that satisficing is otherwise adequately motivated, that the level of mandatory satisficing can be nonarbitrarily specified, or that satisficing will not require deontological ingredients such as rights to protect satisficers from maximizers. Another move is to introduce a positive/negative duty distinction. 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 1948; Quinton 1988) Yet as with the satisficing move, it is unclear how a consistent consequentialist can motivate this restriction on all-out optimization of the Good. A more popular move by 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, alienating, and self-effacing or unknowable. There is not space here to evaluate indirect consequentialism. It is important to point out, however, that indirect consequentialism has been strongly criticized, as either ultimately collapsing into direct consequentialism, or else as being paradoxical and unpublicizable (Lyons 1965; Alexander and Sherwin 2001). Moreover, the knowability criticism of direct consequentialism seems equally applicable to indirect consequentialism, given that the consequences of the rules, etc., like the consequence of acts, stretch into the distant future. 2. Deontological Theories Having briefly taken a look at deontologists' foil, consequentialist theories of act evaluation, we turn now to examine deontological theories. In contrast to consequentialist theories, deontological theories judge the morality of choices by criteria different than the states of affairs those choices bring about. Roughly speaking, deontologists of all stripes hold that some choices cannot be justified by their effects — that no matter how morally good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden. On deontological accounts of morality, agents cannot make certain wrongful choices even if by doing so the number of wrongful choices will be minimized (because other agents will be prevented from engaging in similar wrongful choices). For 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 deontologists, the Right has 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). 2.1 Agent-Centered Deontological Theories The most traditional mode of taxonomizing deontological theories is to divide them between agent-centered and 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 are to be confused with the subjective reasons that form the nerve of psychological explanations of human action. (Nagel 1986) An agent-relative reason constitutes an objective reason for some particular agent to do or not to do something, even though it need not constitute such a reason for anyone else. Thus, an agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a particular agent to take 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 everyone else. Likewise, an agent-relative permission (absence of obligation) is a permission to do some act even though that act will produce certain adverse consequences. Each parent, to revert to the same example, is commonly thought to be permitted (at the least) to save his own child rather than 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, and my promisees a certain way 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 beneficient 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 the cognitive states of belief, what it is our actions risk, and what it is our actions cause. If we predict that an act of ours will result in evil, such prediction is a cognitive state (of belief); it is not an 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, without in fact either causing or even risking it; and we can cause or risk evil results without intending them. Intending thus does not collapse into risking, causing, or predicting; and on the version of agent-centered deontology here considered, it is intending 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 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 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 (Moore 1993; Kamm 1994; Kamm 1996; Moore 2008). 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; 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) (Williams 1973; Moore 2008). 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, even though it is not permissible for an agent to have initiated the movement of the trolley towards the one to save the 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 distinctions have been suggested as part and parcel of another centuries-old Catholic doctrine, 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. That is, the view would be that agency in the relevant sense is equally constituted by intention and causings (i.e., action) (Moore 2007). 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 causings 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 (Moore 1997), or perhaps not blameworthy at all (Alexander 1990a).) 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 the self as 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. Secondly, many find the distinctions invited by the Doctrine of Double Effect and 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, and 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, that omitting is one kind of causing, and so forth. Such criticisms of the DDE and the DDA 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 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. 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 of these worries motivate the alternative, victim-centered views of deontology. 2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories A second group of deontological moral theories can be classified, in opposition to the first group, as patient-centered. These theories are rights-based rather than duties-based; and some versions purport to be quite agent-neutral in the reasons they give moral agents. Although all patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people's rights, perhaps the most plausible version posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one's consent. It is not, for example, a right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a right against being used for 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 works 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; 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, and Gauthier (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2004; Gauthier 1986). 2.2.1 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories, Trolleys, and Transplants The patient-centered theories appear capable of explaining the fairly universal, cross-cultural 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 in five dying ones, thereby saving their lives, the universal reaction is condemnation. (The same is 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. The only significant difference appears to be 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. 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 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 version 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. 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 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). That raises the question, how can such patient-centered deontological theories 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 the patient-centered deontological constraint 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 give equal regard. It is when killing and injuring are otherwise justifiable that the deontological constraint against usings comes into play. This version of deontology is aptly labeled Libertarian in that it cannot accommodate any strong (that is, enforceable or coercible) duty to aid others. For if there were such a strong positive duty — if, 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. Any positive duties will thus not be rights-based ones; they will be consequentially-justified duties that can be trumped by the right not to be coerced to perform them. (This point also demonstrates that any deontological theory that posits a strong, coercible duty to aid will be agent-neutral, not agent-relative; everyone has duties correlative to everyone's right not to be used.) As stated, this patient-centered group of deontological theories is agent-neutral in the reasons it presents. John's right not to have his body, labor, or talent used without his consent is an intrinsic good that everyone has reason to promote. Nor does this version of deontology fail to give everyone's interest impartial consideration. Everyone is equally inviolate as a moral patient. 2.2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories and the Paradox of Deontological Constraints Patient-centered theories share with agent-centered theories the so-called paradox of deontological constraints — the fact that one may not violate a deontological duty even to prevent several violations by others. (The paradox: If A's using X — one using — is bad, then why is not B's using Y and C's using Z — two usings — worse? And if it is, then why should we prohibit A's using X if his doing so will prevent B's and C's usings of Y and Z?) A first-cut reply by patient-centered deontologists would go thusly: Violating X's rights to prevent others from violating the rights of Y and Z “uses” X for the benefit of Y and Z; and it is no more paradoxical to proscribe using X to prevent others from using Y and Z than it is to proscribe using X to produce other kinds of benefits for Y and Z. Still, the critic of deontology may not be satisfied. If usings are bad, then are not more usings worse than fewer? And if so, then it is not odd to condemn acts that produce better states of affairs than would occur in their absence? The patient-centered deontologist has one possible strategy open at this point. He can just deny that wrong acts on his account of wrongness — usings — can be translated into bad states of affairs. Two wrongings are not “worse” than one. They 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 patient-centered deontologist rejects the comparability of states of affairs that involve usings and those that do not. Similarly, the patient-centered deontologist may reject the comparability of states of affairs that involve more or fewer usings (Brook 2007). The deontologist might attempt to back this assertion by relying upon the separateness of persons. Wrongs are only wrongs to persons. A wrong to Y and a wrong to Z cannot be added to make some greater wrong because there is no person who suffers this greater wrong (cf. Taurek 1977). This solution to the paradox of deontology, which is consistent with the spirit of the patient-centered version, may seem attractive, but it comes at a high cost. In Trolley, for example, where there is no using and thus no bar to switching, one cannot claim that it is better to switch and save the five. For if the deaths of the five cannot be summed, their deaths are not worse than the death of the one worker on the siding. Although there is no deontological bar to switching, neither is the saving of a net four lives a reason to switch. Worse yet, were the trolley heading for the one worker rather than the five, there would be no reason not to switch the trolley, killing the five in order to save the one. Just as a net gain of four lives is no reason to switch the trolley, so a net loss of four lives is no reason not to switch the trolley. If the numbers don't count, they don't count either way. The problem of how to account for the significance of numbers without giving up deontology and adopting consequentialism, and without resurrecting the paradox of deontology, is one that a number of deontologists are now working to solve (e.g., Kamm 1996; Scanlon 2003; Otsuka 1006; Hsieh et al. 2006). Until it is solved, it will remain a huge thorn in the deontologist's side. 2.3 Contractarian Deontological Theories Somewhat orthogonal to the distinction between agent-centered and patient-centered deontological theories are contractualist deontological theories. Morally wrong acts are, on such accounts, those acts that would be forbidden by principles that people in a suitably described social contract would accept (e.g., Rawls 1971; Gauthier 1986), or that would be forbidden only by principles that some people could not “reasonably reject” (e.g., Scanlon 2003). In deontology, as elsewhere in ethics, is not entirely clear whether a contractualist account is really normative as opposed to metaethical. Thomas Scanlon's contractualism, for example, which posits at its core those norms of action that we can justify to each other, seems as much an ontological and epistemological account of moral notions as an account of which particular acts are right or wrong. The same may be said of David Gauthier's contractualism. Another complication is that contractualism as a method for deriving moral norms does not necessarily lead to nonconsequentialism. John Harsanyi, for example, argues that parties to the social contract would choose utilitarianism over the principles John Rawls argues would be chosen (Harsanyi 1973). Nor is it clear that contractualism (when it does generate a deontological ethic) favors either an agent centered or a patient centered version of such an ethic. 2.4 Deontological Theories and Kant If any philosopher is regarded as central to deontological moral theories, it is surely Immanuel Kant. Indeed, each of the branches of deontological ethics — the agent-centered, the patient-centered, and the contractualist — can lay claim to being Kantian. The agent-centered deontologist can cite Kant's locating the moral quality of acts in the principles or maxims on which the agent acts and not primarily in those acts' effects on others. For Kant, the only thing unqualifiedly good is a good will. The patient-centered deontologist can, of course, cite Kant's injunction against using others as mere means to one's end. And the contractualist can cite, as Kant's contractualist element, Kant's insistence that the maxims on which one acts be capable of being willed as a universal law — willed by all rational agents. 3. The Advantages of Deontological Theories Having canvassed the two main types of deontological theories (together with a contractualist variation of each), it is time to assess deontological morality more generally. On the one hand, deontological morality, in contrast to consequentialism, leaves space for agents to give special concern to their families, friends, and projects. At least that is so if the deontological morality contains no strong duty of general beneficence, or, if it does, it places a cap on that duty's demands. Deontological morality, therefore, avoids the overly demanding and alienating aspects of consequentialism and accords more with conventional notions of our moral duties. Likewise, deontological moralities, unlike most views of consequentialism, leave space for the supererogatory. A deontologist can do more that is morally praiseworthy than morality demands. A consequentialist cannot, assuming none of the moves earlier referenced work. For the consequentialist, if one's act is not morally demanded, it is morally wrong and forbidden. For the deontologist, there are acts that are neither morally wrong nor demanded, some — but only some — of which are morally praiseworthy. As we have seen, deontological theories can account for strong, cross-cultural moral intuitions better than can consequentialism. The contrasting reactions to Trolley and Transplant are illustrative of this. Finally, deontological theories, unlike most views of consequentialist ones, have the potential for explaining why certain people have moral standing to complain about and hold to account those who breach moral duties. For the moral duties typically thought to be deontological in character — unlike, say, duties regarding the environment — are duties to particular people, not duties to bring about states of affairs that no particular person has an individual right to have realized. 4. The Weaknesses of Deontological Theories On the other hand, deontological theories have their own weak spots. The most glaring one is the seeming irrationality of our having duties or permissions to make the world morally worse. Deontologists need their own, non-consequentialist model of rationality, and even more, they need to defuse the model of rationality that motivates consequentialist theories. Until this is done, deontology will always be paradoxical. Patient-centered versions of deontology cannot easily escape this problem, as we have shown. It is not even clear that they have the conceptual resources to make agency important enough to escape this moral paradox. Yet even agent-centered versions face this paradox; having the conceptual resources (of agency and agent-relative reasons) is not the same as making it morally plausible just why each person's agency should be so crucial to that person. Second, it is crucial for deontologists to deal with the conflicts that seem to exist between certain duties, and between certain rights. For more information, please see the entry on moral dilemmas. Kant's bold proclamation that “a conflict of duties is inconceivable” (Kant 1780, 25) is the conclusion wanted, but reasons for believing it are difficult to produce. The intending/foreseeing, doing/allowing, causing/aiding, and related distinctions certainly reduce potential conflicts; whether they can totally eliminate such conflicts is a yet unresolved question. Thirdly, there is the manipulability worry mentioned before with respect to agent-centered versions of deontology. To the extent potential conflict is eliminated by resort to the Doctrine of Double Effect, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and so forth, then a potential for “avoision” is opened up. (It is not clear to what extent patient-centered versions rely on these Doctrines and distinctions to mitigate potential conflict.) Fourth, there is what might be called the paradox of relative stringency. There is an aura of paradox in asserting that all deontological duties are categorical — to be done no matter the consequences — and yet asserting that some of such duties are more stringent than others. A common thought is that “there cannot be degrees of wrongness with intrinsically wrong acts…,” (Frey 1995, 78 n. 3). Yet relative stringency — “degrees of wrongness” — seems forced upon the deontologist by two considerations. First, duties of differential stringency can be weighed against one another if there is conflict between them, so that a conflict-resolving, overall duty becomes possible if duties can be more or less stringent. Second, when we punish for the wrongs consisting in our violation of deontological duties, we (rightly) do not punish all violations equally. The greater the wrong, the greater the punishment deserved; and relative stringency of duty violated (or importance of rights) seems the best way of making sense of greater versus lesser wrongs. Fifth, there are situations — unfortunately not all of them thought experiments — where compliance with deontological norms will bring about disastrous consequences. To take a stock example of much current discussion, suppose that unless A violates the deontological duty not to torture an innocent person (B), ten, or a thousand, or a million other innocent people will die because of a hidden nuclear device. If A is forbidden by deontological morality from torturing B, many would regard that as a reductio ad absurdum of deontology. Deontologists have six possible ways of dealing with such “moral catastrophes” (although only two of these are plausible). First, they can just bite the bullet and declare that sometimes doing what is morally right will have tragic results but that allowing such tragic results to occur is still the right thing to do. Complying with moral norms will surely be difficult on those occasions, but the moral norms apply nonetheless with full force, overriding all other considerations. We might call this the Kantian response, after Kant's famous hyperbole: “Better the whole people should perish” than that injustice be done (Kant 1780, 100). One might also call this the absolutist conception of deontology, because such a view maintains that conformity to norms has absolute force and not merely great weight. The second plausible response is for the deontologist to abandon Kantian absolutism for what is usually called “threshold deontology.” A threshold deontologist holds that deontological norms govern up to a point despite adverse consequences; but when the consequences become so dire that they cross the stipulated threshold, consequentialism takes over (Moore 1997, ch. 17). A may not torture B to save the lives of two others, but he may do so to save a thousand lives if the “threshold” is higher than two lives but lower than a thousand. There are two varieties of threshold deontology that are worth distinguishing. On the simple version, there is some fixed threshold of awfulness beyond which morality's categorical norms no longer have their overriding force. Such a threshold is fixed in the sense that it does not vary with the stringency of the categorical duty being violated. The alternative is what might be called “sliding scale threshold deontology.” On this version, the threshold varies in proportion to the degree of wrong being done — the wrongness of stepping on a snail has a lower threshold (over which the wrong can be justified) than does the wrong of stepping on a baby. Threshold deontology (of either stripe) is an attempt to save deontological morality from the charge of fanaticism, but it faces several theoretical difficulties. Foremost among them is giving a theoretically tenable account of the location of such a threshold, either absolutely or on a sliding scale (Alexander 2000; Ellis 1992). Why is the threshold for torture of the innocent at one thousand lives, say, as opposed to nine hundred or two thousand? Another problem is that whatever the threshold, as the dire consequences approach it, counter-intuitive results appear to follow. For example, it may be permissible, if we are one-life-at-risk short of the threshold, to pull one more person into danger who will then be saved, along with the others at risk, by killing an innocent person (Alexander 2000). Thirdly, there is some uncertainty about how one is to reason after the threshold has been reached: are we to calculate at the margin on straight consequentialist grounds, use an agent-weighted mode of summing, or do something else? A fourth problem is that threshold deontology threatens to collapse into a kind of consequentialism. Indeed, it is likely that the sliding scale version of threshold deontology is extensionally equivalent to an agency-weighted form of consequentialism (Sen 1982). (Deontologists face an analogous “threshold” problem with the notion of consent. Most deontological duties/rights can be waived through someone's consent. Yet deontologists regard the preconditions for valid consent as turning on factors — most importantly, information and freedom from coercive pressures — that are scalar in nature, matters of more or less. The deontologist, in other words, requires a threshold for these factors, above which consent is valid, below which it is not. And the same problem of locating a deontological threshold on a continuum that affects threshold deontology and deontological consent may also affect identifying the “morally considerable.”) The remaining four strategies for dealing with the problem of dire consequences cases all have the flavor of evasion by the deontologist. Consider first the famous view of Elizabeth Anscombe (Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979): such cases (real or imagined) can never present themselves to the consciousness of a truly moral agent because such agent will realize it is immoral to even think about violating moral norms in order to avert disaster. Such rhetorical excesses should be seen for what they are, a peculiar way of stating Kantian absolutism motivated by an impatience with the question. Another response by deontologists, this one most famously associated with Bernard Williams, shares some of the “don't think about it” features of the Anscombean response. According to Williams (Williams 1973), situations of moral horror are simply “beyond morality,” and even beyond reason. (This view is reminiscent of the ancient view of natural necessity, revived by Sir Francis Bacon, that such cases are beyond human law and can only be judged by the natural law of instinct.) Williams tells us that in such cases we just act. Interestingly, Williams contemplates that such “existentialist” decision-making will result in our doing what we have to do in such cases — for example, we torture the innocent to prevent nuclear holocaust. Surely this is an unhappy view of the power and reach of human law, morality, or reason. Indeed, Williams (like Bacon and Cicero before him) think there is an answer to what should be done, albeit an answer very different than Anscombe's. But both views share the weakness of seeing morality and even reason as running out on us when the going gets tough. Yet another strategy is to divorce completely the moral appraisals of acts from the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the agents who undertake them, even when those agents are fully cognizant of the moral appraisals. So, for example, if A tortures innocent B to save a thousand others, one can hold that A's act is morally wrong but also that A is morally praiseworthy for having done it. Deontology does have to grapple with how to mesh deontic judgments of wrongness with “hypological” (Zimmerman 2002) judgments of blameworthiness (Alexander 2004). Yet it would be an oddly cohering morality that condemned an act as wrong yet praised the doer of it. Deontic and hypological judgments ought to have more to do with each other than that. Moreover, it is unclear what action-guiding potential such an oddly cohered morality would have: should an agent facing such a choice avoid doing wrong, or should he go for the praise? The last possible strategy for the deontologist in order to deal with dire consequences is to distinguish moral reasons from all-things-considered reasons and to argue that whereas moral reasons dictate obedience to deontological norms even at the cost of catastrophic consequences, all-things-considered reasons dictate otherwise. (This is one reading of Bernard William's famous discussion of moral luck, where non-moral reasons seemingly can trump moral reasons (Williams 1975; Williams 1981); this is also a strategy some consequentialists (e.g., Portmore 2003) seize as well in order to handle the demandingness and alienation problems endemic to consequentialism.) But like the preceding strategy, this one seems desperate. Why should one even care that moral reasons align with deontology if all-things-considered reasons align with consequentialism? 5. Deontology's Relation(s) to Consequentialism Reconsidered The perceived weaknesses of deontological theories have lead some to consider how to eliminate or at least reduce those weaknesses while preserving deontology's advantages. One way to do this is to embrace both consequentialism and deontology, combining them into some kind of a mixed theory. Given the differing notions of rationality underlying each kind of theory, this is easier said than done. After all, one cannot simply weigh agent-relative reasons against agent-neutral reasons, without stripping the former sorts of reasons of their distinctive character. A time-honored way of reconciling opposing theories is to allocate them to different jurisdictions. Tom Nagel's reconciliation of the two theories is a version of this, inasmuch as he allocates the agent-neutral reasons of consequentialism to our “objective” viewpoint, whereas the agent-relative reasons of deontology are seen as part of our inherent subjectivity. (Nagel 1986) Yet Nagel's allocations are non-exclusive; the same situation can be seen from either subjective or objective viewpoints, meaning that it is mysterious how we are to combine them into some overall view. A less mysterious way of combining deontology with consequentialism is to assign to each a jurisdiction that is exclusive of the other. One possibility here is to regard the agent-neutral reasons of consequentialism as a kind of default rationality/morality in the sense that when an agent-relative permission or obligation applies, it governs, but in the considerable logical space where neither applies, consequentialism holds sway (Moore 2008). (Remembering that for the threshold deontologist, consequentialist reasons may still determine right action in areas governed by agent-relative obligations or permissions, once the level of bad consequences crosses the relevant threshold.) 5.1 Making no concessions to consequentialism: a purely deontological rationality? In contrast to mixed theories, deontologists who seek to keep their deontology pure hope to expand agent-relative reasons to cover all of morality and yet to mimic the advantages of consequentialism. Doing this holds out the promise of denying sense to the otherwise damning question, how could it be moral to make (or allow) the world to be worse (for they deny that there is any states-of-affairs “worseness” in terms of which to frame such a question) (Foot 1985). To make this plausible, one needs to expand the coverage of agent-relative reasons to cover what is now plausibly a matter of consequentialist reasons, such as positive duties to strangers. Moreover, deontologists taking this route need a content to the permissive and obligating norms of deontology that allows them to mimic the outcomes making consequentialism attractive. This requires a picture of morality's norms that is extremely detailed in content, so that what looks like a consequentialist balance can be generated by a complex series of norms with extremely detailed priority rules and exception clauses. (Richardson 1990) Few consequentialists will believe that this is a viable enterprise. 5.2 Making no concessions to deontology: a purely consequentialist rationality? The mirror image of the pure deontologist just described is the indirect or two-level consequentialist. For this view too seeks to appropriate the strengths of both deontology and consequentialism, not by embracing both, but by showing that an appropriately defined version of one can do for both. The indirect consequentialist, of course, seeks to do this from the side of consequentialism alone. Yet as noted above, indirect consequentialism is plagued by either paradox (“why follow the rules when not doing so produces better consequences?”); collapses into direct consequentialism (“do not follow the rules whenever better consequences can thereby be produced”); or nonpublicizability (“ordinary folks should be instructed to follow the rules but should not be told of the ultimate consequentialist basis for doing so, lest they depart from the rules mistakenly believing better consequences will result”). For more information, please see the entry on rule consequentialism. Nor can the indirect consequentialist adequately explain why those who violate the indirect consequentialist's rules have “wronged” those who might be harmed as a result, that is, why the latter have a personal complaint against the former. (This is true irrespective of whether the rule-violation produces good consequences; but it is especially so when good consequences result from the rule-violation.) Moreover, as also noted, indirect consequentialism faces the same knowability (of consequences) problem that direct consequentialism faces. The bottom line is that if deontology has intuitive advantages over consequentialism, those advantages cannot be captured by moving to indirect consequentialism, even if there is a version of indirect consequentialism that could avoid the dire consequences problem that bedevils deontological theories 6. Deontological Moralities and Retributivism A word is in order about the relation between deontological morality and retributivism as a theory of punishment. Some theorists believe that retributivism and deontology go hand in hand, in the sense that one requires the other. Yet deontology as such does not require retributivism to be true. Retributivism has two aspects: (1) it requires that the innocent not be punished, and (2) it requires that the guilty be punished. One could be a deontologist generally and yet deny that morality has either of these requirements. The converse relationship between deontology and retributivism is also suspect. The retributivist who requires that all and only the guilty be punished can cast this as a categorical demand, in which case the retributivism will be deontological. But a retributivist might alternatively cast these two states of affairs (the guilty getting punished and the innocent not getting punished) as two intrinsic goods, to be traded off both against each other (as in burden of proof allocation) and against other values. Some retributivists urge the latter as a kind of explicitly “consequentialist retributivism.” (Moore 1997) 7. Deontology and the Obligation to Obey the Law Some argue that one of our deontological duties is the duty to obey the law (Gert 1970). Others argue that any duty to obey the law depends on whether the law possesses practical authority, which for some is a contingent matter (Raz 1979), and for others is impossibility (Hurd 1999). Almost everyone, however, believes that law has a very important moral function, namely, settling what one ought to do and thereby averting the moral costs of unpredictable conduct, failures of coordination, decision-making costs, and outright conflict. Law accomplishes this moral function by making otherwise abstract moral requirements determinate and thus capable of predictably guiding and coordinating conduct. And it makes abstract moral requirements determinate through blunt rules, the application of which turns on a few easily ascertainable facts. Blunt legal rules perform their moral function by ignoring facts that would otherwise be morally significant. This means that in some, perhaps many, instances, the rules will prescribe penalties for those who violate them for morally compelling though legally immaterial reasons. And this in turn means that, for the sake of morally good consequences, law seemingly mandates penalizing those who act morally blamelessly in violating it – a troubling result for the deontologist who is a retributivist (Alexander & Sherwin 2001; compare Hurd 1999). Two items of interest to deontology generally have come out of the literature on legal obligation. One is the analysis of non-consequentialist obligations crucial to a deontologist of any stripe; a prominent analysis of the structure of such obligations has been in terms of “exclusionary reasons,” reasons that do not outweigh competing reasons but rather exclude them from counting (Raz 1979; Moore 1989; Alexander 1990b). A second is a role-sensitive version of agent-relative reasons. On one view of the matter, officials may have reasons to enforce laws even though those same reasons fail to obligate those against whom the laws will be enforced to obey the laws. This, it is said, creates a “normative gap” between officials acting on their official roles and ordinary citizens (Alexander and Sherwin 2001; Schauer 1991; compare Hurd 1999). 8. Deontological Theories and Metaethics Deontological theories are normative theories. They do not presuppose any particular position on moral ontology or on moral epistemology. Presumably, a deontologist can be a moral realist of either the natural (moral properties are identical to natural properties) or nonnatural (moral properties are not themselves natural properties even if they are nonreductively related to natural properties) variety. Or a deontologist can be an expressivist, a constructivist, a transcendentalist, a conventionalist, or a Divine command theorist regarding the nature of morality. Likewise, a deontologist can claim that we know the content of deontological morality by direct intuition, by Kantian reflection on our normative situation, or by reaching reflective equilibrium between our particular moral judgments and the theories we construct to explain them (theories of intuitions). Nonetheless, although deontological theories can be agnostic regarding metaethics, some metaethical accounts seem less hospitable than others to deontology. For example, the stock furniture of deontological normative ethics — rights, duties, permissions — fits uneasily in the realist-naturalist's corner of the metaethical universe. (Which is why most naturalists, if they are moral realists, tend to be consequentialists.) Nonnatural realism, conventionalism, transcendentalism, and Divine command seem more hospitable metaethical homes for deontology. If that is true, then weaknesses with those metaethical accounts will weaken deontology as a normative theory of action. 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Other Internet Resources [Please contact the author with suggestions.] Related Entries consequentialism: rule | doing vs. allowing harm | double effect, doctrine of | ethics: virtue | Kant, Immanuel: moral philosophy | Moore, George Edward: moral philosophy | moral dilemmas Alexander, Larry and Moore, Michael, "Deontological Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Virtue Ethics First published Fri Jul 18, 2003; substantive revision Wed Jul 18, 2007 Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach which emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that which emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximise well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. Three of virtue ethics' central concepts, virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia are often misunderstood. Once they are distinguished from related but distinct concepts peculiar to modern philosophy, various objections to virtue ethics can be better assessed. * 1. Preliminaries * 2. Virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia * 3. Objections to virtue ethics * 4. Future directions * Bibliography * Other Internet Resources * Related Entries 1. Preliminaries Virtue ethics' founding fathers are Plato and, more particularly Aristotle (its roots in Chinese philosophy are even more ancient) and it persisted as the dominant approach in Western moral philosophy until at least the Enlightenment. It suffered a momentary eclipse during the nineteenth century but re-emerged in the late 1950's in Anglo-American philosophy. It was heralded by Anscombe's famous article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (Anscombe 1958) which crystallised an increasing dissatisfaction with the forms of deontology and utilitarianism then prevailing. Neither of them, at that time, paid attention to a number of topics that had always figured in the virtue ethics' tradition — the virtues themselves, motives and moral character, moral education, moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life and the fundamentally important questions of what sort of person I should be and how we should live. Its re-emergence had an invigorating effect on the other two approaches, many of whose proponents then began to address these topics in the terms of their favoured theory. (The sole unfortunate consequence of this has been that it is now necessary to distinguish “virtue ethics” (the third approach) from “virtue theory”, a term which is reserved for an account of virtue within one of the other approaches.) Interest in Kant's virtue theory has redirected philosophers' attention to Kant's long neglected Doctrine of Virtue, and utilitarians are developing consequentialist virtue theories (Hooker 2000, Driver 2001). It has also generated virtue ethical readings of philosophers other than Plato and Aristotle, such as Martineau, Hume and Nietzsche, and thereby different forms of virtue ethics have developed (Slote 2001, Swanton 2003). But although modern virtue ethics does not have to take the form known as “neo-Aristotelian”, almost any modern version still shows that its roots are in ancient Greek philosophy by the employment of three concepts derived from it.These are arête (excellence or virtue) phronesis (practical or moral wisdom) and eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing). As modern virtue ethics has grown and more people have become familiar with its literature, the understanding of these terms has increased, but it is still the case that readers familiar only with modern philosophy tend to misinterpret them. 2. Virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a “desirable” or “morally valuable” character trait. It is, indeed a character trait — that is, a disposition which is well entrenched in its possessor, something that, as we say “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker — but the disposition in question, far from being a single track disposition to do honest actions, or even honest actions for certain reasons, is multi-track. It is concerned with many other actions as well, with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. (Hence the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of a single action.) The most significant aspect of this mindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a certain range of considerations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealing, and does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agent thinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear being caught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwise would be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not the actions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, always tells the truth, nor even as one who always tells the truth because it is the truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without being tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That would be a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason for not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due, but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” as a reason for making them. An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truth — but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on. Given that a virtue is such a multi-track disposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to an agent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series of similar actions, especially if you don't know the agent's reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002). Moreover, to possess, fully, such a disposition is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare, and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal (Athanassoulis 2000). Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree, for most people who can be truly described as fairly virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can be truly described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their blind spots — little areas where they do not act for the reasons one would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, and notably so in demanding ones may nevertheless be trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent. Further, it is not easy to get one's emotions in harmony with one's rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I may be honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake because it would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being so wholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict. Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw a distinction between full or perfect virtue and “continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise. Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfect virtue appears to go against the intuition that there is something particularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it is especially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of this depends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978, 11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agent acts — say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full purse, or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seeking help — then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restore the purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But if what makes it hard is an imperfection in her character — the temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to the suffering of others — then it is not. Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is through lacking phronesis — moral or practical wisdom. The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes its possessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent or admirable person who acts and feels well, rightly, as she should. These are commonly accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular (putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say of someone that he is too generous or honest, generous or honest “to a fault”. It is commonly asserted that someone's compassion might lead them to act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, in their desire to prevent someone else's hurt feelings. It is also said that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked things than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So it would appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite being virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest, compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally good, admirable person — or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are, then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good to act wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion? The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, which permits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms, combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the virtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational choice. If one thinks of generosity or honesty as the disposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses such as the desire to give or to speak the truth, if one thinks of compassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of others and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage as merely fearlessness, or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeed seem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to their possessor's acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as it is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed by children, and although children thus endowed (bar the “courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nice children, we would not say that they were morally virtuous or admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation by inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “natural virtue” — a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection by phronesis or practical wisdom. Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge is not culpable ignorance. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults. Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint. They are also, importantly, culpable if their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefiting him. Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well or “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdom is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. The detailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge or understanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspects of it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress the point that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be applied correctly without practical wisdom, because correct application requires situational appreciation — the capacity to recognise, in any particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient. This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom. One is that it characteristically comes only with experience of life. Amongst the morally relevant features of a situation may be the likely consequences, for the people involved, of a certain action, and this is something that adolescents are notoriously clueless about precisely because they are inexperienced. It is part of practical wisdom to be wise about human beings and human life. (It should go without saying that the virtuous are mindful of the consequences of possible actions. How could they fail to be reckless, thoughtless and short-sighted if they were not?) The aspect that is more usually stressed regarding situational appreciation is the practically wise agent's capacity to recognise some features of a situation as more important than others, or indeed, in that situation, as the only relevant ones. The wise do not see things in the same way as the nice adolescents who, with their imperfect virtues, still tend to see the personally disadvantageous nature of a certain action as competing in importance with its honesty or benevolence or justice. These aspects coalesce in the description of the practically wise as those who understand what is truly worthwhile, truly important, and thereby truly advantageous in life, who know, in short, how to live well. In the Aristotelian “eudaimonist” tradition, this is expressed in the claim that they have a true grasp of eudaimonia. The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moral philosophy, is central to any modern neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and usually employed even by virtue ethicists who deliberately divorce themselves from Aristotle. It is standardly translated as “happiness” or “flourishing” and occasionally as “well-being.” Each translation has its disadvantages. The trouble with “flourishing” is that animals and even plants can flourish but eudaimonia is possibly only for rational beings. The trouble with “happiness”, on any contemporary understanding of it uninfluenced by classically trained writers, is that it connotes something which is subjectively determined. It is for me, not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy, or on whether my life, as a whole, has been a happy one, for, barring, perhaps, advanced cases of self-deception and the suppression of unconscious misery, if I think I am happy then I am — it is not something I can be wrong about. Contrast my being healthy or flourishing. Here we have no difficulty in recognizing that I might think I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, or think that I was flourishing and just be plain wrong. In this respect, “flourishing” is a better translation than “happiness”. It is all too easy for me to be mistaken about whether or not my life is eudaimon (the adjective from eudaimonia) not simply because it is easy to deceive oneself, but because it is easy to have a mistaken conception of eudaimonia, or of what it is to live well as a human being, believing it to consist largely in physical pleasure or luxury for example. The claim that this is, straightforwardly, a mistaken conception, reveals the point that eudaimonia is, avowedly, a moralised, or “value-laden” concept of happiness, something like “true” or “real” happiness or “the sort of happiness worth seeking or having.” It is thereby the sort of concept about which there can be substantial disagreement between people with different views about human life that cannot be resolved by appeal to some external standard on which, despite their different views, the parties to the disagreement concur. All standard versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordance with virtue is necessary for eudaimonia. This supreme good is not conceived of as an independently defined state or life (made up of, say, a list of non-moral goods that does not include virtuous activity) which possession and exercise of the virtues might be thought to promote. It is, within virtue ethics, already conceived of as something of which virtue is at least partially constitutive. Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a human life devoted to physical pleasure or the acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon, but a wasted life, and also accept that they cannot produce a knock down argument for this claim proceeding from premises that the happy hedonist would acknowledge. But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on that conceptual link between virtue and eudaimonia, further links are matters of dispute and generate different versions. For Aristotle, virtue is necessary but not sufficient — what is also needed are external goods which are a matter of luck. For Plato, and the Stoics, it is both (Annas 1993), and modern versions of virtue ethics disagree further about the link between eudaimonia and what gives a character trait the status of being a virtue. Given the shared virtue ethical premise that “the good life is the virtuous life” we have so far three distinguishable views about what makes a character trait a virtue. According to eudaimonism, the good life is the eudaimon life, and the virtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those character traits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck. So there is a link between eudaimonia and what confers virtue status on a character trait. But according to pluralism, there is no such tight link. The good life is the morally meritorious life, the morally meritorious life is one that is responsive to the demands of the world (on a suitably moralised understanding of “the demands of the world” and is thereby the virtuous life because the virtues just are those character traits in virtue of which their possessor is thus responsive (Swanton 2003). And according to perfectionism or “naturalism”, the good life is the life characteristically lived by someone who is good qua human being, and the virtues enable their possessor to live such a life because the virtues just are those character traits that make their possessor good qua human being (an excellent specimen of her kind). 3. Objections to virtue ethics (i) The application problem. In the early days of virtue ethics' revival, the approach was associated with an “anti-codifiability” thesis about ethics, directed against the prevailing pretensions of normative theory. At the time, utilitarians and deontologists commonly (though not universally) held that the task of ethical theory was to come up with a code consisting of universal rules or principles (possibly only one, as in the case of act-utilitarianism) which would have two significant features: (a) the rule(s) would amount to a decision procedure for determining what the right action was in any particular case; (b) the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that any non-virtuous person could understand and apply it (them) correctly. Virtue ethicists maintained, contrary to these two claims, that it was quite unrealistic to imagine that there could be such a code (see, in particular, Pincoffs 1971 and McDowell:1979). The results of attempts to produce and employ such a code, in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, when medical and then bioethics boomed and bloomed, tended to support the virtue ethicists' claim. More and more utilitarians and deontologists found themselves agreed on their general rules but on opposite sides of the controversial moral issues in contemporary discussion. It came to be recognised that moral sensitivity, perception,imagination, and judgement informed by experience — phronesis in short — is needed to apply rules or principles correctly. Hence many (though by no means all) utilitarians and deontologists have explicitly abandoned (b) and much less emphasis is placed on (a). However, the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce codifiable principles is still the most commonly voiced criticism of the approach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unable to provide action-guidance. Initially, the objection was based on a misunderstanding. Blinkered by slogans that described virtue ethics as “concerned with Being rather then Doing”, as addressing “What sort of person should I be?” but not “What should I do?” as being “agent-centred rather than act-centred”, its critics maintained that it was unable to provide action-guidance and hence, rather than being a normative rival to utilitarian and deontological ethics, could claim to be no more than a valuable supplement to them. The rather odd idea was that all virtue ethics could offer was “Identify a moral exemplar and do what he would do” as though the raped fifteen year old trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion was supposed to ask herself “Would Socrates have had an abortion if he were in my circumstances?” But the objection failed to take note of Anscombe's hint that a great deal of specific action guidance could be found in rules employing the virtue and vice terms (“v-rules”) such as “Do what is honest/charitable; do not do what is dishonest/uncharitable” (Hursthouse 1991). (It is a noteworthy feature of our virtue and vice vocabulary that, although our list of generally recognised virtue terms is comparatively short, our list of vice terms is remarkably, and usefully, long, far exceeding anything that anyone who thinks in terms of standard deontological rules has ever come up with. Much invaluable action guidance comes from avoiding courses of action that would be irresponsible, feckless, lazy, inconsiderate, uncooperative, harsh, intolerant, selfish, mercenary, indiscreet, tactless, arrogant, unsympathetic, cold, incautious, unenterprising, pusillanimous, feeble, presumptuous, rude, hypocritical, self-indulgent, materialistic, grasping, short-sighted, vindictive, calculating, ungrateful, grudging, brutal, profligate, disloyal, and on and on.) This response to “the action guidance problem” generated other objections, for example (ii) the charge of cultural relativity. Is it not the case that different cultures embody different virtues, (MacIntyre 1985) and hence that the v-rules will pick out actions as right or wrong only relative to a particular culture? Different replies have been made to this charge. One — the tu quoque, or “partners in crime” response — exhibits a quite familiar pattern in virtue ethicists' defensive strategy (Solomon 1988). They admit that, for them, cultural relativism is a challenge, but point out that it is just as much a problem for the other two approaches. The (putative) cultural variation in character traits regarded as virtues is no greater — indeed markedly less — than the cultural variation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare. That cultural relativity should be a problem common to all three approaches is hardly surprising. It is related, after all, to the “justification problem” (see below) the quite general metaethical problem of justifying one's moral beliefs to those who disagree, whether they be moral sceptics, pluralists or from another culture. A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has less difficulty with cultural relativity than the other two approaches. Much cultural disagreement arises, it may be claimed, from local understandings of the virtues, but the virtues themselves are not relative to culture (Nussbaum 1988). Another objection to which the tu quoque response is partially appropriate is (iii) “the conflict problem.” What does virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas — cases in which, apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict because they point in opposed directions? Charity prompts me to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the same sorts of dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontological rules. Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem (and are happy to take it on board rather than follow some of the utilitarians in their consequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas) and in fact their strategies for responding to it are parallel. Both aim to resolve a number of dilemmas by arguing that the conflict is merely apparent; a discriminating understanding of the virtues or rules in question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, will perceive that, in this particular case, the virtues do not make opposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certain exception clause built into it. Whether this is all there is to it depends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are, proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably that it could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is, ex hypothesi, irresolvable. Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by both utilitarianism and deontology, is (iv) “the justification problem.” Abstractly conceived, this is the problem of how we justify or ground our ethical beliefs, an issue that is hotly debated at the level of metaethics. In its particular versions, for deontology there is the question of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are the correct ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim that the only thing that really matters morally is consequences for happiness or well-being. For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question of which character traits are the virtues. In the metaethical debate, there is widespread disagreement about the possibility of providing an external foundation for ethics — “external” in the sense of being external to ethical beliefs — and the same disagreement is found amongst deontologists and utilitarians. Some believe that ethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form of scepticism, such as what anyone rational desires, or would accept or agree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that it cannot. Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics in an external foundation while continuing to maintain that their claims can be validated. Some follow a form of Rawls' coherentist approach (Slote 2001, Swanton 2003); neo-Aristotelians a form of ethical naturalism. A misunderstanding of eudaimonia as an unmoralised concept leads some critics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians are attempting to ground their claims in a scientific account of human nature and what counts, for a human being, as flourishing. Others assume that, if this is not what they are doing, they cannot be validating their claims that, for example, justice, charity, courage, and generosity are virtues. Either they are illegitimately helping themselves to Aristotle's discredited natural teleology (Williams 1985) or producing mere rationalisations of their own personal or culturally inculcated values. But McDowell, Foot, MacIntyre and Hursthouse have all recently been outlining versions of a third way between these two extremes. Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, is indeed a moralised concept, but it is not only that. Claims about what constitutes flourishing for human beings no more float free of scientific facts about what human beings are like than ethological claims about what constitutes flourishing for elephants. In both cases, the truth of the claims depends in part on what kind of animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests the humans or elephants have. The best available science today (including evolutionary theory and psychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greek assumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves and unlike polar bears. No rationalising explanation in terms of anything like a social contract is needed to explain why we choose to live together, subjugating our egoistical desires in order to secure the advantages of co-operation. Like other social animals, our natural impulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures and preservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones. This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim that the virtues are at least partially constitutive of human flourishing and also undercut the objection that virtue ethics is, in some sense, egoistic. (v) The egotism objection has a number of sources. One is a simple confusion. Once it is understood that the fully virtuous agent characteristically does what she should without inner conflict, it is triumphantly asserted that “she is only doing what she wants to do and is hence being selfish.” So when the generous person gives gladly, as the generous are wont to do, it turns out she is not generous and unselfish after all, or at least not as generous as the one who greedily wants to hang on to everything she has but forces herself to give because she thinks she should! A related version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent, unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she does because she believes that acting thus on this occasion will help her to achieve eudaimonia. But “the virtuous agent” is just “the agent with the virtues” and it is part of our ordinary understanding of the virtue terms that each carries with it its own typical range of reasons for acting. The virtuous agent acts as she does because she believes that someone's suffering will be averted, or someone benefited, or the truth established, or a debt repaid, or ... thereby. It is the exercise of the virtues during one's life that is held to be at least partially constitutive of eudaimonia, and this is consistent with recognising that bad luck may land the virtuous agent in circumstances that require her to give up her life. Given the sorts of considerations that courageous, honest, loyal, charitable people wholeheartedly recognise as reasons for action, they may find themselves compelled to face danger for a worthwhile end, to speak out in someone's defence, or refuse to reveal the names of their comrades, even when they know that this will inevitably lead to their execution, to share their last crust and face starvation. On the view that the exercise of the virtues is necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia, such cases are described as those in which the virtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out, eudaimonia is not possible for them (Foot 2001, 95). On the Stoical view that it is both necessary and sufficient, a eudaimon life is a life that has been successfully lived (where “success” of course is not to be understood in a materialistic way) and such people die knowing not only that they have made a success of their lives but that they have also brought their lives to a markedly successful completion. Either way, such heroic acts can hardly be regarded as egoistic. A lingering suggestion of egoism may be found in the misconceived distinction between so-called “self-regarding” and “other-regarding” virtues. Those who have been insulated from the ancient tradition tend to regard justice and benevolence as real virtues, which benefit others but not their possessor, and prudence, fortitude and providence (the virtue whose opposite is “improvidence” or being a spendthrift) as not real virtues at all because they benefit only their possessor. This is a mistake on two counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefit their possessors, since without them eudaimonia is not possible. Secondly, given that we live together, as social animals, the “self-regarding” virtues do benefit others — those who lack them are a great drain on, and sometimes grief to, those who are close to them (as parents with improvident or imprudent adult offspring know only too well). The most recent objection (vi) to virtue ethics claims that work in “situationist” social psychology shows that there are no such things as character traits and thereby no such things as virtues for virtue ethics to be about (Doris 1998, Harman 1999). But virtue ethicists claim in response that the social psychologists' studies are irrelevant to the multi-track disposition (see above) that a virtue is supposed to be (Sreenivasan 2002 ). Mindful of just how multi-track it is, they agree that it would be reckless in the extreme to ascribe a demanding virtue such as charity to people of whom they know no more than that they have exhibited conventional decency; this would indeed be 'a fundamental attribution error.' 4. Future directions As noted under “Preliminaries” above, a few non-Aristotelian forms of virtue ethics have developed. The most radical departure from the ancient Greek tradition is found in Michael Slote's 'agent-based' approach (Slote 2001) inspired by Hutcheson, Hume, Martineau and the feminist ethics of care. Slote's version of virtue ethics is agent-based (as opposed to more Aristotelian forms which are said to be agent-focused) in the sense that the moral rightness of acts is based on the virtuous motives or characters of the agent. However, the extent of the departure has been exaggerated. Although Slote discusses well-being rather than eudaimonia, and maintains that this consists in certain “objective” goods, he argues that virtuous motives are not only necessary but also sufficient for well-being. And although he usually discusses (virtuous) motives rather than virtues, it is clear that his motives are not transitory inner states but admirable states of character, such as compassion, benevolence and caring. Moreover, although he makes no mention of practical wisdom, such states of character are not admirable, not virtuous motives, unless they take the world into account and are 'balanced', in (we must suppose) a wise way. The growing interest in ancient Chinese ethics currently tends to emphasise its common ground with the ancient Greek tradition but, as it gains strength, it may well introduce a more radical departure. Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last twenty years,it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the area of applied ethics. Many editors of big textbook collections on “bioethics”, or “moral problems” or “biomedical ethics” now try to include articles representative of each of the three normative approaches but are often unable to find any virtue ethics article addressing a particular issue. This is sometimes, no doubt, because “the” issue has been set up as a deontologicial/utilitarian debate, but it is often simply because no virtue ethicist has yet written on the topic. However, the last few years have seen the first collection on applied virtue ethics (Walker and Ivanhoe 2007) and increasing attention to the virtues in role ethics.This area can certainly be expected to grow in the future, and it looks as though applying virtue ethics in the field of environmental ethics may prove particularly fruitful (Sandler 2007). Whether virtue ethics can be expected to grow into “virtue politics” — i.e. to extend from moral philosophy into political philosophy — is not so clear. Although Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far as the former is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractive sources of insight where politics is concerned. However, Nussbaum's most recent work (Nussbaum 2006) suggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all, generate a satisfyingly liberal political philosophy. Moreover, as noted above, virtue ethics does not have to be neo-Aristotelian. It may be that the virtue ethics of Hutcheson and Hume can be naturally extended into a modern political philosophy (Hursthouse 1990–91; Slote 1993). Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has always emphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcation of rules but as the training of character. In 1982, Carol Gilligan wrote an influential attack (In a Different Voice) on the Kantian-inspired theory of educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. Though primarily intended to criticize Kohlberg's approach as exclusively masculinist, Gilligan's book unwittingly raised many points and issues that are reflected in virtue ethics. Probably Gilligan has been more effective than the academic debates of moral philosophers, but one way or another, there is now a growing movement towards virtues education, amongst both academics (Carr 1999) and teachers in the classroom. Bibliography A. Books * Adams, Robert Merihew, 2006, A Theory of Virtue, New York: Oxford University Press. * Annas, Julia, 1993, The Morality of Happiness, New York: Oxford University Press. * Baron, Marcia W., Philip Pettit and Michael Slote, 1997, Three Methods of Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press. * Crittenden, Paul, 1990, Learning to be Moral, New Jersey: Humanities Press International. * Dent, N.J.H., 1984, The Moral Psychology of the Virtues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Driver, Julia, 2001, Uneasy Virtue, New York: Cambridge University Press. * Foot, Philippa, 1978, Virtues and Vices, Oxford: Blackwell. * –––, 2001, Natural Goodness, Oxford, Clarendon Press. * Galston, William, 1991, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State, New York, Cambridge University Press. * Geach, Peter, 1977, The Virtues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Goldie, Peter, 2004, On Personality, London: Routledge. * Halwani, Raja, 2003, Virtuous Liaisons, Chicago: Open Court. * Hudson, Stephen, 1986, Human Character and Morality, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. * Hooker, Brad, 2000, Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Hurka, Thomas, 2001, Virtue, Vice, and Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1999, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1985, After Virtue, London, Duckworth, 2nd Edition. * –––, 1999, Dependent Rational Animals, Chicago: Open Court. * Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 2006, Frontiers of Justice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. * Slote, Michael, 2001, Morals from Motives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Swanton, Christine, 2003, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Taylor, Gabriele, 2006, Deadly Vices, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Tessman, Lisa, 2005, Burdened Virtues, New York: Oxford University Press. * Williams, Bernard, 1985, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. B. Anthologies * Carr, David and Jan Steutel (eds.), 1999, Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, New York: Routledge. * Chappell, T. (ed.), 2006, Values and Virtues, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Crisp, Roger (ed.), 1996, How Should One Live? Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote (eds.), 1997, Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Darwall, Stephen (ed.), 2003, Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell. * Flanagan, Owen and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), 1990, Identity, Character and Morality, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. * French, Peter A., Theodore Uehling,Jr., and Howard Wettstein (eds.), 1988, Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. XIII Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press * Statman, D. (ed.), 1997a, Virtue Ethics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. * Walker, Rebecca L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), 2007, Working Virtue, Oxford: Oxford University Press. . C. Survey Articles * Annas, Julia, 2006, “Virtue Ethics”, in David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 515–536. * Oakley, J., 1996, “Varieties of Virtue Ethics”, Ratio, 9: 128–52. * Statman, Daniel, 1997b, “Introduction to Virtue Ethics”, in Statman, 1997a: 1–41. * Swanton, Christine, 2003, “75 Virtue Ethics”, in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier Science. * Trianosky, Gregory Velazco y., 1990, “What is Virtue ethics All About?”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 27: 335–44, reprinted in Statman, 1997a. D. Articles * Athanassoulis, Nafsika, 2000, “A Response to Harman: Virtue Ethics and Character Traits,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), 100: 215–221. * Anscombe, G.E.M., 1958, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy, 33: 1–19. * Badhwar, N.K., 1996, “The Limited Unity of Virtue”, Noûs, 30: 306–29. * Doris, John M., 1998, “Persons, Situations and Virtue Ethics,” Noûs, 32: 4, 504–30. * Foot, Philippa, 1994, “Rationality and Virtue”, in H. Pauer-Studer (ed.), Norms, Values , and Society, Amsterdam: Kluwer, 205–16. * –––, 1995, “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 15: 1–14. * Galston, William, 1992, “Introduction”, in J.W. Chapman and W. Galston (eds.), Virtue. Nomos, 34: 1–14. * Geach, P.T., 1956, “Good and Evil”, Analysis, 17: 33–42. * Harman, G., 1999, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), 119: 316–31. * Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1990–1, “After Hume's Justice”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 91: 229–45. * McDowell, John, 1979, “Virtue and Reason”, Monist, 62: 331–50. * –––, 1980, “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics”, reprinted in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, 359–76. * –––, 1995, “Two Sorts of Naturalism”, in Virtues and Reasons, R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence and W. Quinn (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 149–79. * Nussbaum, Martha, 1988, “Non-relative virtues: An Aristotelian Approach”, in French et al. 1988, 32–53. * –––, 1990, “Aristotelian Social Democracy”, in R. Douglass, G. Mara, and H. Richardson (eds.), Liberalism and the Good, New York: Routledge, 203–52. * Pincoffs, Edmund L., 1971, “Quandary Ethics”, Mind, 80: 552–71. * Slote, Michael, 1993, “Virtue ethics and Democratic Values”, Journal of Social Philosophy, 14: 5–37. * Solomon, David, 1988, “Internal Objections to Virtue Ethics”, in French et al., 428–41, reprinted in Statman 1997a. * Sreenivasan, Gopal, 2002, “Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution,” Mind, 111 (January): 47–68. * Stocker, Michael, 1976, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories”, Journal of Philosophy, 14: 453–66. * Swanton, Christine, 1995, “Profiles of the Virtues”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 76: 47–72. * –––, 1998, “Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics”, International Studies in Philosophy, 30: 29–38. * Watson, Gary, 1990, “On the Primacy of Character”, in Flanagan and Rorty, 449–83, reprinted in Statman, 1997a. Other Internet Resources * Literature on Aristotle and Virtue Ethics, Ethics Updates, Larry Hinman, U. San Diego. * Bibliography on Virtue Ethics (in PDF, listed alphabetically), and Bibliography on Virtue Ethics (in PDF, listed chronologically), by Jörg Schroth. Related Entries Aristotle | character, moral | consequentialism | ethics: deontological | moral dilemmas Hursthouse, Rosalind, "Virtue Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

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