Normative Ethics

BY ALAN THOMAS

INTRODUCTION

Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy that theorizes the content of our moral judgments or, as a limitingcase, denies that any such theories are possible (the position of the so-called anti-theorists). While meta-ethicsfocuses on foundational issues concerning the semantics of moral utterance and how our moral views fit morebroadly into a general conception of reality, normative ethics focuses on the major theoretical approaches to thecontent of moral reflection. It is shaped by the historical inheritance of the tradition of moral philosophy in theWest in its focus on deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics as the major forms of normative ethicaltheory. These standard theories have been more recently complemented by the new field of feminist ethics, andinnovations in ethical theory have added hybrid theory and contractualism to the list. All of these views continueto be the subject of intense debate and further refinement.

GENERAL OVERVIEWS

Given the range and diversity of the field, there is no single article that can comprehensively survey normativeethics. This suggests two alternative routes into the subject. Because of the role played by history incontemporary normative ethics, one route to an overview of the subject is via a historical study such as MacIntyre1998. It is a strength, not a weakness, of this recently republished classic that the author has a very engagedpoint of view on his subject matter. More up to date and more comprehensive is the three-volume studyconsisting of Irwin 2007, Irwin 2008, and Irwin 2009. Alternatively, the second route into the subject draws onindividual entries in the main reference overviews of moral philosophy. Comprehensive and very helpful recentreference overviews are Singer 1991, LaFollette 2001, Copp 2007, and Skorupski 2010. These referenceoverviews are divided fairly evenly between meta-ethical and normative topics.

Copp, David, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. New York: Oxford University Press,2007.

[DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195325911.001.0001]

Part 2 contains eight entries on normative ethics, including one on a topic not well represented elsewhere,namely, chapter 20, Particularism and Antitheory, by Mark Lance and Margaret Little.

Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Vol. 1, From Socratesto the Reformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.This is the first volume of a trilogy that is the outstanding recent multivolume history ethical thought by

Oxford Bibliographies Online - Normative Ethics http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com.avoserv.library.fordham.edu/...

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classical scholar Terence Irwin.

Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Vol. 2, From Suarez toRousseau. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.The continuation of Irwins narrative through the early modern period.

Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Vol. 3, From Kant toRawls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Irwins trilogy concludes with a volume that extends up to the moral philosophy of Rawls. It includes threechapters that are thematic overviews of trends in recent moral philosophy.

LaFollette, Hugh. The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.Entries on Act-Utilitarianism by R. G. Frey, Rule-Consequentialism by Brad Hooker, essays onDeontology by Frances Myrna Kamm, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, David McNaughton, andL. W. Sumner. An entry on Virtue Ethics by Michael Slote.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the HomericAge to the Twentieth Century. 2d ed. London: Routledge, 1998.A second edition of a book from 1966 that is the best concise, single-volume history of ethics.

Singer, Peter, ed. A Companion to Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.Contains entries on Kantian Ethics by Onora ONeill, Contemporary Deontology by Nancy Ann Davis,Consequentialism by Philip Pettit, and Virtue Theory by Greg Pence.

Skorupski, John, ed. The Routledge Companion to Ethics. London: Routledge, 2010.Part 4, entitled Perspectives in Ethics, contains entries on Consequentialism by Brad Hooker,Contemporary Kantian Ethics by Andrews Reath, Virtue Ethics by Michael Slote, and Contractualism byRahul Kumar.

TEXTBOOKS AND ANTHOLOGIES

There are several excellent textbooks and anthologies covering normative ethics. Recommended textbooksinclude Shafer-Landau 2010b, which is usefully supplemented by the readings in Shafer-Landau 2010a.Balanced more towards normative, as opposed to meta-ethical themes, is another highly regarded textbook,Timmons 2002.There is a helpful series of anthologies of key texts published by Blackwell, which includesDarwall 2003a, Darwall 2003b, Darwall 2003c, and Darwall 2003d.

Darwall, Stephen, ed. Consequentialism. Blackwell Readings in Philosophy 7. Malden, MA:


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Blackwell, 2003a.

An anthology of key texts focused on consequentialism. Covers the founding texts of consequentialism,with excerpts from Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, and Moore. Also includes recent philosophical work onconsequentialism, including key papers by (inter alia) Scheffler, Parfit, Railton, Rawls, and Sen.

Darwall, Stephen, ed. Contractarianism/Contractualism. Blackwell Readings in Philosophy 8.Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003b.

An anthology of key texts focused on contractarianism and contractualism. Covers the founding texts ofthis tradition, with excerpts from Rousseau and Kant. Also includes recent philosophical work oncontractarianism and contractualism, including key papers by (inter alia) Gauthier, Rawls, Scanlon, andWatson.

Darwall, Stephen, ed. Deontology. Blackwell Readings in Philosophy 9. Malden, MA: Blackwell,2003c.

An anthology of key texts focused on deontology. Covers the founding texts of deontology, with excerptsfrom Kant, Price, and Ross. Also includes recent philosophical work on consequentialism, including keypapers by (inter alia) Nozick, Nagel, Kamm, and Korsgaard.

Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Blackwell Readings in Philosophy 10. Malden, MA: Blackwell,2003d.

An anthology of key texts focused on virtue ethics. Covers the founding texts of virtue ethics, with excerptsfrom Aristotle, Hutcheson and Hume. Also includes recent philosophical work on virtue, including keypapers by (inter alia) Foot, McDowell, Hursthouse, and Slote.

Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2010a.

A set of readings to complement Shafer-Landau 2010b. Contains a selection of classic texts plus morerecent authors such as Foot, Nozick, and Thomson

Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Fundamentals of Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010b.Highly regarded, thematically organized recent textbook with a combination of meta-ethical andnormative topics.

Timmons, Mark. Moral Theory: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.A well-regarded textbook, more balanced towards the major normative theories than the meta-ethicalissues also represented in Shafer-Landau 2010b.

Timmons Mark ed Conduct and Character: Readings in Moral Theory Belmont CA: Wadsworth


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2006.

A set of readings to complement Timmons 2002. A wide-ranging selection of readings, organized bytheme, covering classic authors such as Plato, Aquinas, and Kant, more recent classics such as Ross andSartre, and less well-known figures such as John Arthur and Ayn Rand.

REFERENCE WORKS AND OTHER RESOURCES

There are two main online blogs that discuss topics both in normative ethics and meta-ethics, namely, PEA Soupand Ethics Etc. Both have built up a reputation for reliable postings by professional contributors. Anotherreliable resource is Lawrence Hinmans website Ethics Updates. Mark Timmons will edit a new series, the annualOxford Studies in Normative Ethics, that will publish papers delivered to the newly inaugurated ArizonaWorkshop in Norm ative Ethics. For general reference purposes, the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyis an excellent resource. Notable entries include Deontological Ethics by Larry Alexander and Michael Moore,Consequentialism by Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Virtue Ethics by Rosalind Hursthouse, and Feminist Ethics byRosemarie Tong and Nancy Williams.

Ethics Etc.

A multicontributor blog that focuses mainly on issues in normative ethics, with a professional lineup ofactive contributors.

Hinman, Lawrence. Ethics Updates.

This valuable research resource compiles a list of works on the Internet with a bearing on normative ethics.

PEA Soup.

A multicontributor weblog that focuses mainly on issues in meta-ethics, with some coverage of normativeethics, with a professional lineup of active contributors.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

A highly regarded and authoritative web-based encyclopedia of philosophy in general, with many valuableentries in normative ethics.

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

This is a series of annual volumes that publishes cutting-edge research in the field of normative ethics.

CONSEQUENTIALISM

Consequentialism offers a particular interpretation of the commonsense intuition that it is always right to act forthe best. Consequentialists interpret that remark in the following way: the reflective moral agent ought to takeup an impartial standpoint rank outcomes from best to worst and act rightly where acting rightly brings about


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the outcome that is ranked the best. This account of rightness uses a value in its ranking of outcomes. Onemajor issue dividing consequentialists is how to explain that value. The most familiar consequentialist viewstake this value to be utility and then offer different accounts of utility: simple hedonistic views take utility toconsist in a mental state; more objective views identify the value concerned with the object of informed choice orwith a selection from an objective list of human goods. (At that point these objective forms of utilitarianismshade over into ethical perfectionism.) There are, however, consequentialist but nonutilitarian views, suggestingthat consequentialism and utilitarianism are related as genus to species. The limiting case is a view such as G. E.Moores that is consequentialist about rightness but also claims that goodness is indefinable. All of thesedifferent accounts of value, rightness, and outcomes are the basis for further evaluations of character,institutions, and practices.

Formulations of Consequentialism

Consequentialism has developed radically from its initial formulation as a form of hedonism that identifiedutility with pleasure in Bentham 1996. Already by the time of John Stuart Mill this simple hedonism was underpressure; in his seminal Mill 1962 John Stuart Mill argued that Bentham represented a foundationalist aim toplace ethics on a scientific basis that needed to be balanced with a complementary emphasis on reforming theinternal spirit of existing social institutions. Mills own view already marked a shift toward a more pluralist viewof utility expressed in Mill 1987. Historically, the next classical text of utilitarianism is Sidgwick 1981. Thatwork contains a thorough examination of the relationship between utilitarianism and commonsense morality.Sidgwick concludes that the practical use of reason is divided within itself and is unable to reconcile a dualismbetween the claims of utilitarianism and the claims of rational egoism. The option of a nonutilitarian formulationof consequentialism was explored in Moore 1993, another work of Cambridge philosophy influenced bySidgwicks (partial) critique of the rational egoist. In more recent work the classic defense of consequentialism isParfit 1984. It is comparable to Sidgwicks work in its scope and ambition, and makes important connectionsbetween the truth of consequentialism and our intuitive ideas about personal identity, continuity, and survival. Acomprehensive account of consequentialism and its relation to contemporary formulations of deontology isfound in Kagan 1989. A key issue for the correct understanding of the plausible versions of contemporaryconsequentialism is whether the theory aims to be a practical guide to decision or to be the true account of thenature of those properties that constitute rightness. Recent discussion of that issue all begin from the seminalpaper Bales 1971.

Bales, R. Eugene. Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-making Characteristics or Decision-making Procedure? American Philosophical Quarterly 8.3 (1971): 257265.An important and much-cited paper that detaches the idea that consequentialism offers a decisionprocedure from the separate idea that it offers an account of right-making properties of actions. Balesargues that act-utilitarianism aims only at the latter.

Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation. Edited by J. H. Burnsand H. L. A. Hart. The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

The classic statement of hedonistic act consequentialism. Originally published in 1789.


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Kagan, Shelly. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.Forthright and wide-ranging restatement of the case for consequentialism and a sophisticated critique ofits deontological rivals.

Mill, John Stuart. Mill on Bentham and Coleridge. London: Chatto & Windus, 1962.One of the seminal documents of 19th-century thought, in which Mill explains his synthesis of two strandsof Enlightenment philosophy and their models for the criticism of existing institutions identified withBentham and Coleridge (where the latter is the preeminent English-language exponent of Hegelian socialtheory).

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. In Utilitarianism and Other Essays. By John Stuart Mill andJeremy Bentham. London: Penguin Classics, 1987.

A further development of consequentialism from its origins in Benthams work, famously introducing adistinction between higher and lower pleasures that has been interpreted either as refining hedonism oras breaking with it. Originally published in 1861. Should be read alongside Mill 1962.

Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Rev. ed. Edited by Thomas Baldwin. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993.

Combines a consequentialist account of rightness as producing the most good with the claim that theproperty of goodness is simple and indefinable. Originally published in 1903.

Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984.A later classic contribution to consequentialism including, inter alia, an extended discussion of hedonism,informed desire and objective list accounts of utility. Parfits overall argument is to ground the case forconsequentialism on a reductionist view of personal identity.

Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1981.The classic source of the authority of the objective, or impartial, point of view. Originally published in1907.

Defining Utility

The distinction between utilitarianism and consequentialism turns on whether one can define goodness asutility; a related issue is the complex internal debate within the tradition as to what constitutes utility. For asophisticated defense of the kind of hedonism associated with the founder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham,see Feldman 2004. This contrasts markedly with the perfectionist account of well-being found in Hurka 1993,indicating the range and flexibility of utilitarian accounts of utility. Sumner 1996 defends utility, in the form ofwelfare, as the only basic value in a way that contrasts with the merely formal account of welfare defended inGriffin 1986.


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Feldman, Fred. Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties and Plausibility ofHedonism. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.An ingenious recent defense of hedonism that makes the psychological states involved constrained byfurther evaluative dimensions.

Griffin, James. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance. Oxford: Clarendon,1986.

Utility is a merely formal analysis of the different kinds of things good for a person, namely, personhood,accomplishment, understanding, deep personal relations, and aesthetic enjoyment.

Hurka, Thomas. Perfectionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Defends an objective view of well-being as excellence in the development of our physical essence andcapacity for rationality.

Sumner, L. W. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.A defense of welfarism that surveys the existing forms of welfarism before defending a monistic theory inwhich welfare is the only basic value.

Act Versus Rule Utilitarianism

Do formulations of utilitarianism apply to token actions or to rules, policies, practices, or action types? Theclassic discussion of this issue for recent normative ethics is Lyons 1965; a robust defense of ruleconsequentialism is Hooker 2000s classic formulation of the position. Norcross 1997, by contrast, defends arefined version of act utilitarianism. An issue for the act version of the view and, arguably, for rule-utilitarianversions too is whether it is too demanding. Mulgan 2001 offers a sophisticated treatment of the issue.

Hooker, Brad. Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality. Oxford:Clarendon, 2000.

The canonical recent formulation of rule consequentialism that has proved to be the starting point for allrecent discussions of the view.

Lyons, David. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965.A classic analysis of the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism. Very influential and still the beststarting point for discussions of the distinction that defends a variant of the latter as utilitariangeneralization.

Mulgan, Tim. The Demands of Consequentialism. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.A sustained defense of consequentialism from the charge of excessive demandingness.


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Norcross, Alastair. Good and Bad Actions. Philosophical Review 106.1 (1997): 134.[DOI: 10.2307/2998340]

The leading contemporary exponent of act utilitarianism holds an interesting variation of the standardview. In Norcrosss sophisticated scalar consequentialism, particular action tokens can only be assessedas better or worse than alternative actions relative to a context of choice.

Objections to Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the dominant view in recent normative ethics and has, for that reason, been extensivelydiscussed. The following critical studies are representative of the main lines of objection to the view: Smart andWilliams 1973 argues that utilitarianism has an excessively strong view of negative responsibility and can makeno sense of the value of integrity. Rawls 1999 takes the utilitarian tradition to be the main rival to his own viewof justice and devotes various parts of his arguments to criticism of the utilitarian tradition. One particularlyinfluential objection is that the utilitarian ignores the separateness of persons. Foot 1983 targets thefundamental utilitarian idea that we can talk about the goodness or badness of outcomes from no ones point ofview in particular, a thesis that Foot finds problematic and a departure from our ordinary way of thinking aboutthe value of outcomes. Foots arguments may usefully be supplemented by the more meta-ethical discussion ofThomson 1993 that offers a complementary account of the uses of the expression good. Hurley 2009 is asophisticated recent treatment of the issue of demandingness that argues that the purity of consequentialistprinciples is in tension with their ability to supply authoritative rational guidance for agents such as ourselves.

Foot, Philippa. Utilitarianism and the Virtues. Proceedings and Addresses of the AmericanPhilosophical Association 57.2 (1983): 273283.[DOI: 10.2307/3131701]

An influential critique of the idea that commonsense morality contains any counterpart of theconsequentialists idea that an outcome can be valuable from no ones point of view in particular.

Hurley, Paul. Beyond Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.[DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559305.001.0001]

A critique of consequentialism on the grounds of excessive demandingness that focuses on the tensionbetween the purity of the content of an act-consequentialist view and its rational authority for agents suchas ourselves.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.In the course of defending his own contractualist view of justice, Rawls not only develops a critique ofutilitarian theories of justice but also presents an influential wider critique of the utilitarians failure to takeseriously the separateness of persons. Originally published in 1971.

Smart, J. J. C., and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1973.


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The classic pair of contrastive studies in which Jack Smart defends act utilitarianism and Bernard Williamspresents a series of objections to both act and rule utilitarianism. Williams argues that utilitarianism canmake no sense of the value of integrity and involves an excessively strong doctrine of negativeresponsibility.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. Goodness and Utilitarianism. Proceedings and Addresses of theAmerican Philosophical Association 67.2 (1993): 145159.[DOI: 10.2307/3130556]

A critique supplementary to Foot 1983 that targets the idea of the goodness of an outcome by arguing thatgood is typically used attributively as in expressions such as a good baseball player, such that there isno basis in the meaning of good for the idea of an outcome that is good from no ones point of view.

CONTRACTUALISM

Primarily developed by Harvard philosopher Thomas Scanlon, contractualism shares with a social-contractapproach to ethics a general conception that the ethical fundamentally concerns social cooperation. However, italso shares with consequentialism the view that ethical thinking involves taking up the perspective of theimpartial standpoint. These themes combine in a conception of acts as right if and only if they are not wrong.Acts are wrong if they would be forbidden by a set of principles that survive the test of reasonable rejectability.A set of principles may be rejected as unreasonable on various grounds; notably, contractualists suggest thatany set of consequentialist principles could be rejected as unreasonably demanding. A particular focus of recentdiscussions of contractualism is the case of saving the one versus the many. (This issue is taken as a litmus testfor distinguishing the view from consequentialism.) Contractualists claim that they can defend the commonsenseintuition that one ought to save the many rather than one without aggregating moral values or claims;contractualism thereby respects the separateness of persons.

Formulations of Contractualism

The formulations of Scanlons contractualism begin with an early, influential paper in which he first presentedthe core idea, namely, Scanlon 1982. The full length presentation of his ideas, however, is his book Scanlon1998. The core intuition that a set of valuable relations between people who are morally bound to each otherallows one to connect the ideas of a wrong and the wronging of someone by another is defended by Kumar 1999but contested by Brand-Ballard 2004. An aspect of Scanlons view that has received a great deal of criticalattention is his idea that the numbers of people that one can save in a situation is relevant to the overallrightness of what one does, but not in a way that aggregates the claims of individuals (as consequentialismallegedly does). This claim is sympathetically analyzed in Kamm 2005 but is criticized, inter alia, by Norcross2002 and Brooks 2002. Hirose 2004 independently argues that this alleged advantage of contractualism overconsequentialism is illusory. An important part of Scanlons argument for his view is the rejection of what hetakes to be its main rival, consequentialism, and in Scanlon 1998 he develops a sophisticated critique of theidea of welfare that is critically evaluated by Arneson 2002.

Arneson, Richard J. The End of Welfare As We Know It? Scanlon versus Welfarist


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Consequentialism. Social Theory and Practice 28.2 (2002): 315336.An assessment of Scanlons claim that there is no single concept that can play the role that theconsequentialist demands of the idea of welfare, namely, to be univocal across its use in first-personaldeliberation, the context of rational advice, and that which is distributed by justice.

Brand-Ballard, Jeffrey. Contractualism and Deontic Restrictions. Ethics 114 (2004): 269300.[DOI: 10.1086/379354]

Argues that contractualisms patient-based focus and neglect of agency makes it inadequate as adefense of deontic restrictions (constraints).

Brooks, Thom. Saving the Greatest Number. Logique et Analyse 45.177178 (2002): 5559.Argues that the Kamm/Scanlon argument for saving the many rather than the one without combiningclaims does, in fact, combine claims.

Hirose, Iwao. Aggregation and Numbers. Utilitas 16.1 (2004): 6279.[DOI: 10.1017/S0953820803001067]

Argues that the aggregative approach to the claims of others does not, as the contractualist claims, fail torespect each individual.

Kamm, F. M. Aggregation and Two Moral Methods. Utilitas 17.1 (2005): 123.[DOI: 10.1017/S0953820804001372]

A careful analysis of the precise nature of Scanlons tie-breaking argument for allowing the numbers ofpeople one can save morally to count within his individualistic framework and a (qualified) defense of hisapproach.

Kumar, Rahul. Defending the Moral Moderate: Contractualism and Common Sense. Philosophyand Public Affairs 28.4 (1999): 275309.[DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.1999.00275.x]

Argues that the contractualist is best placed to show how respecting the individual is compatible withsaving the greater number by locating this class of reasons within valued sets of relationships. Thisaccount connects moral wrongs to the wronging of one person by another.

Norcross, Alastair. Contractualism and Aggregation. Social Theory and Practice 28.2 (2002):303314.

Analyzes Scanlons commitment to nonaggregation and argues that it both fails as an objection toconsequentialism and depends on an indefensible distinction between killing and letting die.


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Scanlon, T. M. Contractualism and Utilitarianism. In Utilitarianism and Beyond. Edited byAmartya Sen and Bernard Williams, 103128. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The early statement, in a single paper, of the core idea of Scanlons contractualism.

Scanlon, T. M. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.The book-length formulation and defense of Scanlons view, which also contains an influential critique ofconsequentialism.

HYBRID THEORY

The influential moral philosopher Thomas Nagel and his former graduate student Samuel Scheffler originatedhybrid theory. Impressed by the critiques of consequentialism that focus on its alleged impersonality, hybridtheorists insist that it is a mistake to conflate the impersonal and the objective points of view. Ethical objectivityimposes the constraint of impartiality on our moral commitments, but some personal commitments can beimpartially underwritten. Hybrid theory aims to be an impartialist view that takes seriously the requirement tobring about the best outcome impersonally considered while also taking into account the demands of thepersonal point of view. This reconciliation takes the form of a theory in which agents are always permitted, butnever required, to bring about the best outcome impersonally considered. They are not required to do so as theyexercise an agent-centered prerogative that attaches undue weight to the reasons and values that arise from thepersonal point of view. In this way hybrid theory offers a rationale for so-called deontic options. However, theconsequentialist part of this view is that it can find no rationale for the idea of agent-centered restrictions (alsocalled deontic constraints or just constraints) on the grounds that they are paradoxical. They are paradoxicalas you are not allowed to violate such a constraint even to prevent further future violations of the very sameconstraint.

Formulations of Hybrid Theory

The original formulation of hybrid theory is Scheffler 1994; it was developed in tandem with Thomas Nagel, andhis different version of the generic view is presented in Nagel 1986. An important early reaction to Schefflersversion of the view is Kagan 1984, and Schefflers belief that one could accommodate options but notrestrictions (constraints) is also criticized by Hurley 1995.

Hurley, Paul. Getting Our Options Clear: A Closer Look at Agent-Centered Options.Philosophical Studies 78.2 (1995): 163188.[DOI: 10.1007/BF00989680]

Argues that the hybrid theorists attempt to incorporate options but abandon deontic constraints isundermined by the common origin of both in the same kind of moral reason, grounded in a persons rightto avoid interference.

Kagan, Shelly. Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much? Recent Work on the Limits ofObligation. Philosophy and Public Affairs 13.3 (1984): 239254.


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A notable critique of hybrid theory from a consequentialist perspective. It is argued that a combination ofdeontic options, but no deontic restrictions, permits an agent to do harm, in the interests of advancing thatoption, as opposed to merely refraining from harm. Scheffler responds to this criticism in the appendixesof Scheffler 1994.

Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Nagels version of hybrid theory in chapters 8 and 9 applies on a case-by-case basis to particular reasons,as opposed to Schefflers version of the view, which applies to classes of reason. It forms part of asophisticated phenomenology of different classes of moral reasons and values and the differing ways inwhich they can be related to the authority of the objective point of view.

Scheffler, Samuel. The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of theConsiderations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.Canonical statement of Schefflers hybrid ethical theory, in which an agent is always permitted, but neverrequired, to bring about the best outcome from the objective perspective. This revised edition has valuableappendices responding to the criticisms of the first edition by Phillipa Foot, Shelly Kagan, and JonathanBennett. Originally published in 1982 (Oxford: Clarendon).

The Paradox of Deontology

An aspect of hybrid theory is its rejection of deontic restrictions, also known as deontic constraints, because oftheir allegedly paradoxical nature. The paradox is identified, but rejected, in Nozick 1974. The nature of thealleged paradoxicality is clarified by Lippert-Rasmussen 1990, and the paradox putatively dissolved in Hurley1997. McMahon 1991 is an unusual defense of constraints from within a consequentialist framework.

Hurley, Paul. Agent-Centered Restrictions: Clearing the Air of Paradox. Ethics 108.1 (1997):120146.

[DOI: 10.1086/233790]

Argues that skepticism about restrictions can only be derived from prior theoretical assumptions, namely,that ethical thinking is solely concerned with the bringing about of outcomes impersonally considered.There is nothing paradoxical about restrictions viewed from the standpoint of practical reason itself asopposed to the instrumental production of outcomes.

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. In What Way Are Constraints Paradoxical? Utilitas 11.1 (1990):4970.

[DOI: 10.1017/S0953820800002260]

A paper that draws helpful distinctions between the different kinds of skepticism about deonticrestrictions (constraints).

McMahon, Christopher. The Paradox of Deontology. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.4 (1991):


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350377.

This paper claims that restrictions can be defended even within a consequentialist framework that includesa maximizing conception of rationality, as they are grounded solely on the idea of treating another unfairly.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.The classic presentation of the putative paradox (at pp. 2835), although Nozick ends up defendingdeontic restrictions (constraints).

DEONTOLOGY

The deontologist believes that moral objectivity is grounded in our capacity for practical rationality and thatthere are rational constraints on conduct just as there are on thought. The dominant influence on contemporarydeontology is the work of Immanuel Kant, which particularly influences normative ethics in North America. Agreat deal of the work listed as neo-Kantian Ethics in the section Neo-Kantian Deontological Theories movesfreely from interpretation of the historical work of Kant and issues in normative ethics. Those who want topresent a rationale for deontic restrictions (constraints) focus on one of three things: the agency perspective of aperson considering the violation (an agency focus), the relation into which a violator places him or herselfvis--vis the victim (victimization focus), or the implications for the victim (a patient-based focus).

Rationales for Deontic Restrictions (Constraints)

In the attempt to find a rationale for deontic constraints, normative theorists have appealed to two ideas: that ofan agent-relative reason that makes essential reference back to the person whose reason it is, and the idea thatagency is key to understanding constraints. McNaughton and Rawling 1993 forcefully argues that an evaluativebasis for deontic reasons would make them vulnerable to consequentialist modeling; Mack 1998 argues thatthere is no interesting connection between agent relativity and deontic constraints. Brook 1991 examines thegeneral idea of connecting constraints to agency in the way Mack suggests. Nagel 2002 shows that Nagel hasmoved away from his early formulation of the view that deontic constraints could be connected to a particularkind of action, namely, victimizing people. Darwall 1986s account of constraints highlights the related idea ofagent-centeredness as opposed to agent relativity.

Brook, Richard. Agency and Morality. Journal of Philosophy 88.4 (1991): 190212.[DOI: 10.2307/2026947]

Argues that basing deontic restrictions on agency fails to explain why one ought not to violate suchrestraints oneself. Agent-focused rationales for deontic constraints on the grounds that they permitintra-agent tradeoffs in which you are permitted to violate a constraint to prevent your own furtherviolations of that constraint, resurrecting the paradox of constraints. So any rationale must be patientbased.

Darwall, Stephen L. Agent-Centered Restrictions from the Inside Out. Philosophical Studies 50(1986): 291319.


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[DOI: 10.1007/BF00353835]

Develops a distinctive agent-centered rationale for deontic constraints grounded in the responsibility andintegrity of the agent.

Mack, Eric. Deontic Restrictions Are Not Agent-Relative Restrictions. Social Philosophy andPolicy 15.2 (1998): 6183.[DOI: 10.1017/S0265052500001953]

Insightful paper arguing that it is a mistake to connect the idea of a deontic restriction to that of agentrelativity in reasons. Each of us is specially responsible for our own agency and hence responsible for thenonviolation of constraints.

McNaughton, David, and Piers Rawling. Deontology and Agency. Monist 76 (1993): 81100.Explains and defends deontic constraints as agent-relative in form and agent-focused in their justification.

Nagel, Thomas. Personal Rights and Public Space. In Concealment and Exposure: And OtherEssays. By Thomas Nagel, 3152. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.In his later work, Nagel, following Kamm, treats deontic restrictions as grounded in inviolability and as agenerally disseminated intrinsic good.

Neo-Kantian Deontological Theories

Moral philosophy is dominated by its history in a way that other areas of the subject are not, and this is nowheremore true than in the remarkable dominance of Kants views, particularly in North America. The following worksrepresent attempts both to reconstruct Kants views and to apply them to normative issues. Baron 1995 focuseson the idea that moral action takes the form of action from duty in finite rational agents such as ourselves;Herman 1993 offers a series of reconstructions in a Kantian framework of values that Kant is assumed to haveneglected, and Hill 1991 applies ideas of a Kantian provenance to a range of normative issues in order todemonstrate the continued relevance of this tradition of normative theorizing.

Baron, Marcia W. Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1995.

A defense of Kants claim that moral action is done from duty and a subtle treatment of the idea of actiondone above and beyond dutys requirements. A reconstruction of Kants views that emphasizes the role ofsympathy.

Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1993.

Influential essays on the idea of action from duty and the representation within neo-Kantian ethics ofacting with integrity and the importance of the personal. Emphasizes the nonderivative value of rationalagency.


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Hill, Thomas E., Jr. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1991.

Pursues the strategy of approaching moral problems without explicit use of Kant but drawing on Kantianresources oriented around the themes in the title of self-respect, autonomy, and their compatibility with anethic of care.

Deontological Normative Theories

The idea that duty is the guise in which the moral law appears to finite, practically rational agents such as humanagents is formulated by Kant 1996; the working out of a systematic normative ethical theory on this basis is thework of Ross 2000. Fried 1978 is a more recent attempt at the systematic development of a rights-baseddeontological theory. A theory of this kind is applied to a range of moral problems in Kamm 1993, Kamm 1996,and Kamm 2007, and a rights-based version defended in Thomson 1990. A much discussed paper from adeontological perspective is Taurek 1977, which argues that given a choice between saving the one and themany, one may permissibly save the one.

Fried, Charles. Right and Wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.A rights-based deontological theory in which rights are absolute and grounded in moral personality.

Kamm, F. M. Morality, Mortality. Vol. 1, Death and Whom to Save From It. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993.

A systematic account of the badness of death, a rejection of Taureks view on saving the one rather thanthe many, and the weighing of harms and practical applications in medical ethics.

Kamm, F. M. Morality, Mortality. Vol. 2, Rights, Duties, and Status. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996.

A defense of a robust distinction between actively killing and passively letting die and a combined theoryof permissible killings and defense of deontic constraints as grounded on the inviolable moral status ofpersons.

Kamm, F. M. Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2007.

Kamms patient focused defense of deontology restrictions on harming extended to a revised account ofdouble (and triple) effect, the distinction between doing and allowing, and a revision of her earlier theoryof permissible harms.

Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 1996.

The origin of deontological ethics; this recent translation of Kants key works in practical philosophyincludes The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) in addition to the better known Groundwork of the Metaphysics


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of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788).

Ross, W. D. Foundations of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford Scholarly Classics, 2000.Rosss formulation of his deontological views in the list of prima facie duties: duties of fidelity, reparation,gratitude, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and self-improvement.

Taurek, John M. Should the Numbers Count? Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (1977): 293316.An extraordinarily influential paper that argues that moral philosophers have significantly misrepresentedordinary moral thinking about cases of where you can save either one or many. In life or death cases, giventhat death is the worst harm there is, it is morally indifferent whether you save the one or the many, asnone of the latter can reasonably complain that he or she has been wronged qua individual.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. The Realm of Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.A rigorously worked-out rights-based deontological theory. Focuses on claim rights, with particularattention to the resolution of conflicts of rights.

VIRTUE ETHICS

Virtue ethics originated in Elizabeth Anscombes radical critique of moral philosophy contemporaneous with herwell-known paper Modern Moral Philosophy (Anscombe 1958, cited under Formulations). Anscombe accusedher contemporaries of investigating the conceptual remnants of a law-based conception of morality that madeno sense without theistic belief, and of lacking an adequate moral psychology of virtue. Alasdair MacIntyredeveloped Anscombes historical thesis (see Anti-Theory). Other moral philosophers proceeded to develop anapproach to normative ethics in which the most fundamental concept is that of a virtuous agent. Some versionsof the view attempt to ground it in philosophical naturalism (Foot, Hursthouse); others view it as complementaryto moral realism (John McDowell); some versions of the view relate it to value pluralism (Adams, Swanton), whilethe pressing question for all versions of the view is whether it can give an adequate account of rightness.Sophisticated responses to virtue ethics attempt to undercut its distinctiveness by modeling virtue withinconsequentialist or deontological frameworks.

Formulations

Moral philosophers were sent back to Aristotle 1976 by the critique of moral philosophy in Anscombe 1958.Foot 1978 and Hursthouse 1999 represent virtue-ethical views most concerned to work within an Aristoteliannaturalism; more pluralist views are represented by Swanton 2003 and Adams 2006. McDowell 1979 connectsvirtue ethics to a distinctive form of moral realism. Slote 1992 attempts a systematic reconstruction of the wholeof normative ethics on a virtue-ethical basis. A useful survey of the many different forms of virtue ethics isOakley 1996.

Adams, Robert Merrihew. A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good. Oxford:Clarendon, 2006.


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A pluralist account of the virtues that explains each virtue as an excellent orientation toward the good.

Anscombe, G. E. M. Modern Moral Philosophy. Philosophy 33 (1958): 119.[DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100037943]

The original, iconoclastic paper that called for the development of an ethic of virtue.

Aristotle. The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J. A. K. Thomson. Rev.ed. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976.

The founding text of virtue ethics and the point of orientation for all recent discussion of an ethics ofvirtue.

Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices, and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell,1978.

A pioneering contribution to the working out of a fully naturalistic virtue ethic grounded in humanflourishing.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Develops Foots naturalistic framework for virtue ethics in terms of the flourishing of a perfectly virtuoushuman being and makes an important distinction between action guiding and action assessing uses ofright.

McDowell, John. Virtue and Reason. Monist 62.3 (1979): 331350.Develops a conception of virtue ethics as a sensitivity to values analogous to knowledge of secondaryproperties.

Oakley, Justin. Varieties of Virtue Ethics. Ratio 9.2 (1996): 128152.[DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9329.1996.tb00101.x]

A very helpful survey of the field.

Slote, Michael. From Morality to Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.A systematic development of virtue ethics as a complete theoretical approach to normative ethics. Arguesthat the distinctive advantage of the view is that it does not involve the self-other asymmetry implicit incommonsense morality and neo-Kantianism.

Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.A pluralist view of virtue ethics that assigns each virtue a distinct function profile and does not base the


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life of virtue on flourishing. The virtues as a whole combine to form a set of different ways ofacknowledging plural forms of value.

Criticisms

An influential early criticism of virtue ethics is formulated in Louden 1984, which argues that virtue ethics couldnot reconstruct a core component of our deontic concepts. Johnson 2003 is a similar attack on virtue ethics,arguing that it must essentially be an incomplete view. That charge informs the critique of Hursthouses versionof the view in Hooker 2002. Hurka 2000 reinforces the claim that the view is not self-standing by offering areconstruction of virtue-ethics form within a consequentialist framework. Doris 2005 develops a very influentialargument that the folk-psychological notion of a virtue is of less predictive value than the role played by theembedding of an agent in a social situation.

Doris, John M. Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005.

Draws on results from social psychology to argue that the folk-psychological notion of a virtue as a robust,situation-independent trait is simply false and therefore ought not to form the basis for a virtue ethic.Argues instead for a situation-dependent notion of character.

Hooker, Brad. The Collapse of Virtue Ethics. Utilitas 14 (2002): 2240.[DOI: 10.1017/S095382080000337X]

A critique of Hursthouses version of virtue ethics arguing that it must essentially be supplemented by ruleconsequentialism.

Hurka, Thomas. Virtue, Vice, and Value. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.Undermines the distinctiveness of virtue ethics as a relatively foundational approach to normative ethics bypresenting a consequentialist account of virtues as intrinsically good.

Johnson, Robert N. Virtue and Right. Ethics 113.4 (2003): 810834.[DOI: 10.1086/373952]

Influential critique of any virtue-ethical account of rightness presenting counterexamples of obligationsthat a completely virtuous person would not even need, such as the obligation to have a better character.

Louden, Robert B. On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics. American Philosophical Quarterly 21.3(1984): 227236.

An early critique of Anscombes and Foots virtue ethics from a rival, Kantian perspective, arguing thattheir views are misguidedly reductionist about deontic concepts. Loudens paper anticipates many of themore recent critiques of virtue ethics.


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FEMINIST ETHICS

Feminist ethics aims to redress an imbalance in the historical traditions of normative ethical theorizing that wehave inherited. It is argued that the vast majority of this work claims to offer truths about ethics that are gender-blind, but it is largely written by men. Some feminist ethics try to recover an emphasis on direct altruism andcaring that is part of the tradition but neglected; others explore what a distinctively feminist ethic might involve.The main historical precursor of feminist ethics is the classic, Wollstonecraft 1975. The main dividing point inrecent feminist ethics remains whether there is a distinctive, gender-sensitive ethical outlook, an issuediscussed in Jaggar 1983 and Walker 2007. A valuable early anthology of feminist ethics is Card 1991; theeditor, Claudia Card, has gone on to develop a wider critique of the kind of wrongs suffered by women in Card2002. One suggestion is that feminist ethics can be developed into a distinctive kind of ethics of care, assuggested by some of the work in Baier 1995 and explicitly in Noddings 2003. A distinct strand of feministethics emerges from Carol Gilligans famous critique of Kohlbergs developmental moral psychology in Gilligan1993.

Baier, Annette C. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics. Exp. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1995.

Collection of essays from a moral philosopher who relates an ethic of care to the wider historical traditionof normative theory; includes the seminal essays What do Women Want from a Moral Theory? and TheNeed for More Than Justice.

Card, Claudia, ed. Feminist Ethics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.A valuable early anthology with papers by (inter alia) Annette Baier, Marilyn Friedman, Alison Jaggar, andMichelle Moody-Adams.

Card, Claudia. The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.[DOI: 10.1093/0195145089.001.0001]

A generalization from a basis in feminist ethics to a general account of evil in a secular context that thenapplies that idea, reflexively, to some of the evils distinctively suffered by women, including violence infamilies and systematic rape in the context of war.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Womens Development.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Very influential critique of Lawrence Kohlbergs developmental moral psychology that argues thatKohlbergs study was implicitly gender biased in a way that thematized female moral development asincomplete.

Jaggar, Alison M. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983.Careful examination of the major forms of feminist political theory and their ethical implications by aleading feminist philosopher.


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Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 2003.

The foundational study for the claim that feminist ethics ought to be centered on the neglected ethicalconcept of care, or direct altruism.

Walker, Margaret Urban. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. 2d ed. New York:Oxford University Press, 2007.

A study that spans normative and meta-ethical issues in framing a distinctively feminist approach tonormative issues.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Edited by Miriam Brody Kramnick.Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1975.

A foundational text for feminist ethics. Wollstonecraft concludes that the deformation in the moralcharacter of the women of her time resulted from inadequate education and male oppression. With theopportunity for moral education, she argued, women ought to develop the same rational, human moralitythat is routinely provided for men. Originally published in 1792.

ANTI-THEORY

Anti-theorists do not believe that moral thought requires philosophy reflectively to endorse its claims, a positionexplicitly defended in the canonical anti-theoretical text, Williams 1985. That book further argues that some ofthe distinctive forms of philosophical reflection distort the ethical thinking in which we actually engage,misrepresents it at the level of theory, and corrode the moral knowledge that we actually have. Normative ethicaltheorizing is rejected because of its lack of historical self-awareness about its own contingency and its implicitlyrationalist commitment to abstraction. It took its cue from a historically informed critique of (then) recent moralphilosophy, MacIntyre 1981. A later text that explicitly argues that philosophical justifications of morality oughtto be rejected and replaced with the cultivation of sympathy and solidarity is Rorty 1989. Another aspect of theanti-theory movement in moral philosophy is particularism, as canonically formulated in Dancy 2004: theparticularist claims that theory depends on the identification of general principles in ethical thinking but thatthere are no such principles available to ordinary moral thought.

Dancy, Jonathan. Ethics without Principles. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.[DOI: 10.1093/0199270023.001.0001]

A canonical statement of the views of the most influential particularist writer in early-21st-century moralphilosophy. A sustained critique of the claim that ethical thinking requires an appeal to principles in anyform.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth, 1981.Iconoclastic book that expanded the argument of Anscombes Modern Moral Philosophy (Anscombe1958, cited under Formulations) to a general indictment of the way in which contemporary moral


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theorizing lacks historical self-awareness, as opposed to a tradition-based model of practical reasoning.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1989.

A rejection of a philosophical vindication of our ethical and political ideas that seeks their grounding inatemporal, universal, and essential features and looks instead to the cultivation of mutual solidarityagainst the background of a purely contingent form of historical community.

Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana, 1985.Includes extended critiques of all the major forms of normative ethical theorizing, with the overall aim ofshowing the limits of a philosophical vindication of our ethical ideas. The pervasive reflectivenessdistinctive of a modern society explains the corrosion of the moral knowledge that we have; the impulse todevelop an ethical theory expresses that reflectiveness but is blind to its actual motivations.

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