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Deontology and value
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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Integration and coherence are central values in human existence. It would be a serious objection to any proposed way of life that it led to us being alienated or cut off from others or from some importan part of ourselves. Morality, with the strenuous demands it makes on us, is one area in which alienation is both particularly threatening and peculiarly undesirable. If morality cuts us off from some important part of ourselves then it appears unattractive, and if it cuts us off from others then it seems self-defeating. While there are few philosophers who take the radical view that morality is, by its very nature, an alienating force, a more common complaint has been that some particular moral theories should be rejected because the picture of moral thought which they offer inevitably leads to the alienation of moral agents. The main target of criticism has been consequentialism, but some deontological theories, especially Kantianism, have also come under attack.
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References
1 Three classic discussions are: Stocker, M., ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories’, Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), pp. 453–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRailton, P., ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality’, Consequentialism and its Critics, Scheffler, S. (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 93–133;Google ScholarWilliams, B., ‘Persons, Character and Morality’, Moral Luck (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 We argue here only against act-consequentialism, according to which, even in its indirect forms, the right act is the one which maximises (or at least sufficiently promotes) the good. Some of our objections apply to rule and motive consequentialism, but discussion of those will have to await another occasion.
3 Nagel, T., The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 165.Google Scholar
4 Strictly, on our view, only reasons to do with constraints and duties of special relationship are essential to deontology. Options are optional. Many deontologists include them, but some, like Ross, do not.
5 We take practical reasons to be facts, and often they are non-psychological, non-normative facts, such as ‘she is my friend and is lonely’. The fact that you ought to help her is a normative fact, but is not itself the reason to help. (If someone asks, Why ought I to help her? the answer is not, Because you ought to.) Motivating states are psychological states of the agent: either belief-desire pairs, or perhaps just beliefs.
6 The act-consequentialist might argue that giving the money to Oxfam would not be right if it would change Juan's character in such a way that the long term consequences of giving to Oxfam rather than visiting Linda were not optimific. But Railton explicitly rules out that suggestion (Railton, ‘Alienation’, p. 121).
7 For a different but equally telling critique of Railton's paper, see Cocking, D. and Oakley, J., ‘Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation’, Ethics 106 (1995), pp. 86–111.pCrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 29.Google Scholar
9 We owe this claim to Philip Stratton-Lake who argues for it in ‘Why Externalism is not a Problem for Ethical Intuitionists’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99 (1999), pp. 82–3Google Scholar
10 This is not a specifically deontological solution, any more than the problem is specifically one for deontology. We Find it, for example, in Railton, ‘Alienation’, pp. 111–12 and Scheffler, S., Human Morality (OxfordUniversity Press, 1992), p. 32.Google Scholar
11 We are grateful to Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker for comments on an earlier version of this paper.