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Beyond Consequentialism
Consequentialist moral theories, according to which morality requires agents to perform the act that promotes the best overall state of affairs, can with some plausibility claim a status as the default alternative in contemporary moral philosophy, and are highly influential in public discourses beyond academic philosophy. Much recent work in ethics has consisted of efforts either to mitigate the counter-intuitiveness of generally consequentialist approaches to ethics, or to strike againstthe fundamental theoretical challenge that consequentialism is taken to provide to considered moral judgments and alternative moral theories. Paul Hurley argues that these discussions of the challenge of consequentialism tend to overlook a fundamental challenge to consequentialism, an unresolved tension between the theory and many of its most fundamental presuppositions. The fundamental challenge to consequentialism can be introduced by way of two claims. The first claim is that there aresome acts that morality prohibits, and others that it requires of us. The second is that we should do what morality requires we typically have decisive reasons to act in accordance with such moral requirements and prohibitions. Hurley argues that if consequentialists have the right account of the content of morality, then it seems that morality cannot have the rational authority that even they commonly take it to have. Consequentialist moral standards are vindicated only by marginalizing the role of morality in practical reason and deliberation. If, however, morality is authoritative, then consequentialism cannot be the correct account of what morality requires and prohibits.