The Burdens of Morality: Why Act‐Consequentialism Demands Too Little

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1):82-85 (2016)
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Abstract

A classic objection to act-consequentialism is that it is overdemanding: it requires agents to bear too many costs for the sake of promoting the impersonal good. I develop the complementary objection that act-consequentialism is underdemanding: it fails to acknowledge that agents have moral reasons to bear certain costs themselves, even when it would be impersonally better for others to bear these costs.

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10.1002/tht3.197

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Tom Dougherty
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Citations of this work

Moral Excuse to the Pacifist's Rescue.Blake Hereth - 2023 - Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence:1-32.
Responding Appropriately to the Impersonal Good.Jörg Https://Orcidorg Löschke - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (3):701-714.

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References found in this work

The View From Nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Utilitarianism: For and Against.J. J. C. Smart & Bernard Williams - 1973 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Bernard Williams.
The limits of morality.Shelly Kagan - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Moral saints.Susan Wolf - 1982 - Journal of Philosophy 79 (8):419-439.

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