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BY ALAN THOMAS
INTRODUCTION
Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy that theorizes the content of our moral judgments or, as a limiting
case, denies that any such theories are possible (the position of the so-called anti-theorists). While meta-ethics
focuses on foundational issues concerning the semantics of moral utterance and how our moral views fit more
broadly into a general conception of reality, normative ethics focuses on the major theoretical approaches to the
content of moral reflection. It is shaped by the historical inheritance of the tradition of moral philosophy in the
West in its focus on deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics as the major forms of normative ethical
theory. These standard theories have been more recently complemented by the new field of feminist ethics, and
innovations in ethical theory have added hybrid theory and contractualism to the list. All of these views continue
to 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 normative
ethics. This suggests two alternative routes into the subject. Because of the role played by history in
contemporary normative ethics, one route to an overview of the subject is via a historical study such as MacIntyre
1998. It is a strength, not a weakness, of this recently republished classic that the author has a very engaged
point of view on his subject matter. More up to date and more comprehensive is the three-volume study
consisting of Irwin 2007, Irwin 2008, and Irwin 2009. Alternatively, the second route into the subject draws on
individual entries in the main reference overviews of moral philosophy. Comprehensive and very helpful recent
reference overviews are Singer 1991, LaFollette 2001, Copp 2007, and Skorupski 2010. These reference
overviews 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 Socrates
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Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study . Vol. 2, From Suarez to
Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study . Vol. 3, From Kant to
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 on
Deontology by Frances Myrna Kamm, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, David McNaughton, and
L. W. Sumner. An entry on Virtue Ethics by Michael Slote.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric
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 by
Rahul Kumar.
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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 on
consequentialism, including key papers by (inter alia) Scheffler, Parfit, Railton, Rawls, and Sen.
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 excerpts
from Kant, Price, and Ross. Also includes recent philosophical work on consequentialism, including key
papers 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 excerpts
from Aristotle, Hutcheson and Hume. Also includes recent philosophical work on virtue, including key
papers by (inter alia) Foot, McDowell, Hursthouse, and Slote.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems . New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010a.
A set of readings to complement Shafer-Landau 2010b. Contains a selection of classic texts plus more
recent 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 and
normative 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-ethical
issues 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 by
theme, covering classic authors such as Plato, Aquinas, and Kant, more recent classics such as Ross and
Sartre, and less well-known figures such as John Arthur and Ayn Rand.
PEA Soup.
A multicontributor weblog that focuses mainly on issues in meta-ethics, with some coverage of normative
ethics, with a professional lineup of active contributors.
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 for
the best. Consequentialists interpret that remark in the following way: the reflective moral agent ought to take
up 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. One
major issue dividing consequentialists is how to explain that value. The most familiar consequentialist views
take this value to be utility and then offer different accounts of utility: simple hedonistic views take utility to
consist in a mental state; more objective views identify the value concerned with the object of informed choice or
with a selection from an objective list of human goods. (At that point these objective forms of utilitarianism
shade over into ethical perfectionism.) There are, however, consequentialist but nonutilitarian views, suggesting
that 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 these
different 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 identified
utility with pleasure in Bentham 1996. Already by the time of John Stuart Mill this simple hedonism was under
pressure; in his seminal Mill 1962 John Stuart Mill argued that Bentham represented a foundationalist aim to
place ethics on a scientific basis that needed to be balanced with a complementary emphasis on reforming the
internal spirit of existing social institutions. Mills own view already marked a shift toward a more pluralist view
of utility expressed in Mill 1987. Historically, the next classical text of utilitarianism is Sidgwick 1981. That
work 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 dualism
between the claims of utilitarianism and the claims of rational egoism. The option of a nonutilitarian formulation
of consequentialism was explored in Moore 1993, another work of Cambridge philosophy influenced by
Sidgwicks (partial) critique of the rational egoist. In more recent work the classic defense of consequentialism is
Parfit 1984. It is comparable to Sidgwicks work in its scope and ambition, and makes important connections
between the truth of consequentialism and our intuitive ideas about personal identity, continuity, and survival. A
comprehensive account of consequentialism and its relation to contemporary formulations of deontology is
found in Kagan 1989. A key issue for the correct understanding of the plausible versions of contemporary
consequentialism is whether the theory aims to be a practical guide to decision or to be the true account of the
nature of those properties that constitute rightness. Recent discussion of that issue all begin from the seminal
paper Bales 1971.
Bales, R. Eugene. Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-making Characteristics or Decisionmaking Procedure? American Philosophical Quarterly 8.3 (1971): 257265.
An important and much-cited paper that detaches the idea that consequentialism offers a decision
procedure from the separate idea that it offers an account of right-making properties of actions. Bales
argues that act-utilitarianism aims only at the latter.
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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 strands
of Enlightenment philosophy and their models for the criticism of existing institutions identified with
Bentham and Coleridge (where the latter is the preeminent English-language exponent of Hegelian social
theory).
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. In Utilitarianism and Other Essays . By John Stuart Mill and
Jeremy Bentham. London: Penguin Classics, 1987.
A further development of consequentialism from its origins in Benthams work, famously introducing a
distinction between higher and lower pleasures that has been interpreted either as refining hedonism or
as 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: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Combines a consequentialist account of rightness as producing the most good with the claim that the
property of goodness is simple and indefinable. Originally published in 1903.
Defining Utility
The distinction between utilitarianism and consequentialism turns on whether one can define goodness as
utility; a related issue is the complex internal debate within the tradition as to what constitutes utility. For a
sophisticated 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 of
welfare, as the only basic value in a way that contrasts with the merely formal account of welfare defended in
Griffin 1986.
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Feldman, Fred. Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature , Varieties and Plausibility of
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.
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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 standard
view. In Norcrosss sophisticated scalar consequentialism, particular action tokens can only be assessed
as 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 extensively
discussed. The following critical studies are representative of the main lines of objection to the view: Smart and
Williams 1973 argues that utilitarianism has an excessively strong view of negative responsibility and can make
no sense of the value of integrity. Rawls 1999 takes the utilitarian tradition to be the main rival to his own view
of justice and devotes various parts of his arguments to criticism of the utilitarian tradition. One particularly
influential objection is that the utilitarian ignores the separateness of persons. Foot 1983 targets the
fundamental utilitarian idea that we can talk about the goodness or badness of outcomes from no ones point of
view in particular, a thesis that Foot finds problematic and a departure from our ordinary way of thinking about
the value of outcomes. Foots arguments may usefully be supplemented by the more meta-ethical discussion of
Thomson 1993 that offers a complementary account of the uses of the expression good. Hurley 2009 is a
sophisticated recent treatment of the issue of demandingness that argues that the purity of consequentialist
principles 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 American
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 of
utilitarian theories of justice but also presents an influential wider critique of the utilitarians failure to take
seriously the separateness of persons. Originally published in 1971.
Smart, J. J. C., and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1973.
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The classic pair of contrastive studies in which Jack Smart defends act utilitarianism and Bernard Williams
presents a series of objections to both act and rule utilitarianism. Williams argues that utilitarianism can
make no sense of the value of integrity and involves an excessively strong doctrine of negative
responsibility.
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. Goodness and Utilitarianism. Proceedings and Addresses of the
CONTRACTUALISM
Primarily developed by Harvard philosopher Thomas Scanlon, contractualism shares with a social-contract
approach to ethics a general conception that the ethical fundamentally concerns social cooperation. However, it
also shares with consequentialism the view that ethical thinking involves taking up the perspective of the
impartial 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 that
any set of consequentialist principles could be rejected as unreasonably demanding. A particular focus of recent
discussions of contractualism is the case of saving the one versus the many. (This issue is taken as a litmus test
for distinguishing the view from consequentialism.) Contractualists claim that they can defend the commonsense
intuition 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 presented
the core idea, namely, Scanlon 1982. The full length presentation of his ideas, however, is his book Scanlon
1998. The core intuition that a set of valuable relations between people who are morally bound to each other
allows one to connect the ideas of a wrong and the wronging of someone by another is defended by Kumar 1999
but contested by Brand-Ballard 2004. An aspect of Scanlons view that has received a great deal of critical
attention is his idea that the numbers of people that one can save in a situation is relevant to the overall
rightness of what one does, but not in a way that aggregates the claims of individuals (as consequentialism
allegedly does). This claim is sympathetically analyzed in Kamm 2005 but is criticized, inter alia, by Norcross
2002 and Brooks 2002. Hirose 2004 independently argues that this alleged advantage of contractualism over
consequentialism is illusory. An important part of Scanlons argument for his view is the rejection of what he
takes to be its main rival, consequentialism, and in Scanlon 1998 he develops a sophisticated critique of the
idea 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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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 a
defense 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 combining
claims does, in fact, combine claims.
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 of
people one can save morally to count within his individualistic framework and a (qualified) defense of his
approach.
Kumar, Rahul. Defending the Moral Moderate: Contractualism and Common Sense. Philosophy
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 to
consequentialism and depends on an indefensible distinction between killing and letting die.
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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 of
consequentialism.
HYBRID THEORY
The influential moral philosopher Thomas Nagel and his former graduate student Samuel Scheffler originated
hybrid theory. Impressed by the critiques of consequentialism that focus on its alleged impersonality, hybrid
theorists insist that it is a mistake to conflate the impersonal and the objective points of view. Ethical objectivity
imposes the constraint of impartiality on our moral commitments, but some personal commitments can be
impartially underwritten. Hybrid theory aims to be an impartialist view that takes seriously the requirement to
bring about the best outcome impersonally considered while also taking into account the demands of the
personal point of view. This reconciliation takes the form of a theory in which agents are always permitted, but
never required, to bring about the best outcome impersonally considered. They are not required to do so as they
exercise an agent-centered prerogative that attaches undue weight to the reasons and values that arise from the
personal point of view. In this way hybrid theory offers a rationale for so-called deontic options. However, the
consequentialist part of this view is that it can find no rationale for the idea of agent-centered restrictions (also
called deontic constraints or just constraints) on the grounds that they are paradoxical. They are paradoxical
as you are not allowed to violate such a constraint even to prevent further future violations of the very same
constraint.
Formulations of Hybrid Theory
The original formulation of hybrid theory is Scheffler 1994; it was developed in tandem with Thomas Nagel, and
his different version of the generic view is presented in Nagel 1986. An important early reaction to Schefflers
version of the view is Kagan 1984, and Schefflers belief that one could accommodate options but not
restrictions (constraints) is also criticized by Hurley 1995.
Hurley, Paul. Getting Our Options Clear: A Closer Look at Agent-Centered Options.
Kagan, Shelly. Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much? Recent Work on the Limits of
Obligation. 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 of
deontic options, but no deontic restrictions, permits an agent to do harm, in the interests of advancing that
option, as opposed to merely refraining from harm. Scheffler responds to this criticism in the appendixes
of 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 a
sophisticated phenomenology of different classes of moral reasons and values and the differing ways in
which they can be related to the authority of the objective point of view.
Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions . Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
Canonical statement of Schefflers hybrid ethical theory, in which an agent is always permitted, but never
required, to bring about the best outcome from the objective perspective. This revised edition has valuable
appendices responding to the criticisms of the first edition by Phillipa Foot, Shelly Kagan, and Jonathan
Bennett. Originally published in 1982 (Oxford: Clarendon).
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 deontic
restrictions (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 includes
a 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 defending
deontic restrictions (constraints).
DEONTOLOGY
The deontologist believes that moral objectivity is grounded in our capacity for practical rationality and that
there are rational constraints on conduct just as there are on thought. The dominant influence on contemporary
deontology is the work of Immanuel Kant, which particularly influences normative ethics in North America. A
great deal of the work listed as neo-Kantian Ethics in the section Neo-Kantian Deontological Theories moves
freely from interpretation of the historical work of Kant and issues in normative ethics. Those who want to
present a rationale for deontic restrictions (constraints) focus on one of three things: the agency perspective of a
person considering the violation (an agency focus), the relation into which a violator places him or herself
vis--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 of
an agent-relative reason that makes essential reference back to the person whose reason it is, and the idea that
agency is key to understanding constraints. McNaughton and Rawling 1993 forcefully argues that an evaluative
basis for deontic reasons would make them vulnerable to consequentialist modeling; Mack 1998 argues that
there is no interesting connection between agent relativity and deontic constraints. Brook 1991 examines the
general idea of connecting constraints to agency in the way Mack suggests. Nagel 2002 shows that Nagel has
moved away from his early formulation of the view that deontic constraints could be connected to a particular
kind of action, namely, victimizing people. Darwall 1986s account of constraints highlights the related idea of
agent-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 such
restraints oneself. Agent-focused rationales for deontic constraints on the grounds that they permit
intra-agent tradeoffs in which you are permitted to violate a constraint to prevent your own further
violations of that constraint, resurrecting the paradox of constraints. So any rationale must be patient
based.
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 and
integrity of the agent.
Mack, Eric. Deontic Restrictions Are Not Agent-Relative Restrictions. Social Philosophy and
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 Other
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 of
acting with integrity and the importance of the personal. Emphasizes the nonderivative value of rational
agency.
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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 Kantian
resources oriented around the themes in the title of self-respect, autonomy, and their compatibility with an
ethic of care.
Kamm, F. M. Morality , Mortality . Vol. 1, Death and Whom to Save From It . New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
A systematic account of the badness of death, a rejection of Taureks view on saving the one rather than
the 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 University
Press, 1996.
A defense of a robust distinction between actively killing and passively letting die and a combined theory
of permissible killings and defense of deontic constraints as grounded on the inviolable moral status of
persons.
Kamm, F. M. Intricate Ethics: Rights , Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm . New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
Kamms patient focused defense of deontology restrictions on harming extended to a revised account of
double (and triple) effect, the distinction between doing and allowing, and a revision of her earlier theory
of 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 philosophy
includes The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) in addition to the better known Groundwork of the Metaphysics
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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 misrepresented
ordinary moral thinking about cases of where you can save either one or many. In life or death cases, given
that death is the worst harm there is, it is morally indifferent whether you save the one or the many, as
none 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 particular
attention to the resolution of conflicts of rights.
VIRTUE ETHICS
Virtue ethics originated in Elizabeth Anscombes radical critique of moral philosophy contemporaneous with her
well-known paper Modern Moral Philosophy (Anscombe 1958, cited under Formulations). Anscombe accused
her contemporaries of investigating the conceptual remnants of a law-based conception of morality that made
no sense without theistic belief, and of lacking an adequate moral psychology of virtue. Alasdair MacIntyre
developed Anscombes historical thesis (see Anti-Theory). Other moral philosophers proceeded to develop an
approach to normative ethics in which the most fundamental concept is that of a virtuous agent. Some versions
of the view attempt to ground it in philosophical naturalism (Foot, Hursthouse); others view it as complementary
to moral realism (John McDowell); some versions of the view relate it to value pluralism (Adams, Swanton), while
the 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 within
consequentialist 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 Aristotelian
naturalism; more pluralist views are represented by Swanton 2003 and Adams 2006. McDowell 1979 connects
virtue ethics to a distinctive form of moral realism. Slote 1992 attempts a systematic reconstruction of the whole
of normative ethics on a virtue-ethical basis. A useful survey of the many different forms of virtue ethics is
Oakley 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.
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 of
virtue.
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 human
flourishing.
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. Argues
that the distinctive advantage of the view is that it does not involve the self-other asymmetry implicit in
commonsense 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 of
acknowledging plural forms of value.
Criticisms
An influential early criticism of virtue ethics is formulated in Louden 1984, which argues that virtue ethics could
not 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 version
of the view in Hooker 2002. Hurka 2000 reinforces the claim that the view is not self-standing by offering a
reconstruction of virtue-ethics form within a consequentialist framework. Doris 2005 develops a very influential
argument that the folk-psychological notion of a virtue is of less predictive value than the role played by the
embedding of an agent in a social situation.
Doris, John M. Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University 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.
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 by
presenting a consequentialist account of virtues as intrinsically good.
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 that
their views are misguidedly reductionist about deontic concepts. Loudens paper anticipates many of the
more 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 we
have inherited. It is argued that the vast majority of this work claims to offer truths about ethics that are genderblind, but it is largely written by men. Some feminist ethics try to recover an emphasis on direct altruism and
caring 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 in
recent feminist ethics remains whether there is a distinctive, gender-sensitive ethical outlook, an issue
discussed in Jaggar 1983 and Walker 2007. A valuable early anthology of feminist ethics is Card 1991; the
editor, Claudia Card, has gone on to develop a wider critique of the kind of wrongs suffered by women in Card
2002. One suggestion is that feminist ethics can be developed into a distinctive kind of ethics of care, as
suggested by some of the work in Baier 1995 and explicitly in Noddings 2003. A distinct strand of feminist
ethics emerges from Carol Gilligans famous critique of Kohlbergs developmental moral psychology in Gilligan
1993.
Baier, Annette C. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics . Exp. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1995.
Collection of essays from a moral philosopher who relates an ethic of care to the wider historical tradition
of normative theory; includes the seminal essays What do Women Want from a Moral Theory? and The
Need 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, and
Michelle 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 then
applies that idea, reflexively, to some of the evils distinctively suffered by women, including violence in
families and systematic rape in the context of war.
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 a
leading feminist philosopher.
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Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education . Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003.
The foundational study for the claim that feminist ethics ought to be centered on the neglected ethical
concept 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 to
normative 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 moral
character of the women of her time resulted from inadequate education and male oppression. With the
opportunity for moral education, she argued, women ought to develop the same rational, human morality
that 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 position
explicitly defended in the canonical anti-theoretical text, Williams 1985. That book further argues that some of
the 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 ethical
theorizing is rejected because of its lack of historical self-awareness about its own contingency and its implicitly
rationalist commitment to abstraction. It took its cue from a historically informed critique of (then) recent moral
philosophy, MacIntyre 1981. A later text that explicitly argues that philosophical justifications of morality ought
to be rejected and replaced with the cultivation of sympathy and solidarity is Rorty 1989. Another aspect of the
anti-theory movement in moral philosophy is particularism, as canonically formulated in Dancy 2004: the
particularist claims that theory depends on the identification of general principles in ethical thinking but that
there 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 moral
philosophy. A sustained critique of the claim that ethical thinking requires an appeal to principles in any
form.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory . London: Duckworth, 1981.
Iconoclastic book that expanded the argument of Anscombes Modern Moral Philosophy (Anscombe
1958, cited under Formulations) to a general indictment of the way in which contemporary moral
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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 in
atemporal, universal, and essential features and looks instead to the cultivation of mutual solidarity
against 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 of
showing the limits of a philosophical vindication of our ethical ideas. The pervasive reflectiveness
distinctive of a modern society explains the corrosion of the moral knowledge that we have; the impulse to
develop an ethical theory expresses that reflectiveness but is blind to its actual motivations.
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