The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions
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Description
According to an ancient if occasionally unfashionable view, the subject matter of moral philosophy is organized in the first instance around the question of how people ought to live their lives. That is certainly how I conceive of the subject, and as a consequence it has sometimes seemed to me that only a fool or a fanatic could seriously think himself ‘professionally’ competent to express and defend views in this area. Despite these scruples, which perhaps represent my better judgement, I am submitting the work that follows for the reader’s consideration. In mitigation, I can only say that if the subject matter of moral philosophy is vast and daunting, as it is, and if the complexity and power of the experiences that typically prompt moral reflection sometimes make the theorist’s abstractions seem hollow and glib, as they do, it is also true that the question which animates the subject as I conceive it is vivid and gripping and demands our attention, even if all too often we acknowledge the demand only by contriving to ignore it. This book grows out of a dissertation which I submitted for the Ph. D. at Princeton in 1977. But my interest in the topics it deals with is as longstanding as my interest in philosophy itself. The first philosophy course I took as an undergraduate at Harvard was a course on ethics taught by Roderick Firth. At the time, I found myself strongly drawn to the deontological views, though not the epistemological intuitionism, of W. D. Ross, and utilitarianism I found thoroughly abhorrent. Rejecting Ross’s own intuitionism, I began to worry about how a deontological view might be defended. My worries have only increased since that time, as the reader of this book will discover, and have led me in directions that have sometimes surprised and dismayed me. This book charts the current state of my thinking.
Publication Date
1982
Edition
1
Recommended Citation
Scheffler, Samuel, "The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions" (1982). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 611.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/611
