The Reasons we can Share: An Attack on the Distinction between Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Values
Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: To later generations, much of the moral philosophy of the twentieth century will look like a struggle toescapefrom utilitarianism. We seem to succeed in disproving one utilitarian doctrine, only to find ourselves caught in the grip of another. I believe that this is because a basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is tobring something about. Too often, the rest of us have pitched our protests as if we were merely objecting to the utilitarian account ofwhatthe moral agent ought to bring about orhowhe ought to do it. Deontological considerations have been characterized as “side constraints,” as if they were essentially restrictions on ways to realize ends. More importantly, moral philosophers have persistently assumed that the primal scene of morality is a scene in which someone does somethingtoorforsomeone else. This is the same mistake that children make about another primal scene. The primal scene of morality, I will argue, is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together. The subject matter of morality is not what we should bring about, but how we should relate to one another. If only Rawls has succeeded in escaping utilitarianism, it is because only Rawls has fully grasped this point. His primal scene, the original position, is one in which a group of people must make a decision together. Their task is to find the reasons they can share.
Source: Social Philosophy and Policy
Author: Christine M. Korsgaard
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2124303882