Different people live different lives. Each life consists of experiences that are not shared with the other lives. These facts are sometimes referred to as the ‘separateness of persons.’ Some writers have appealed to the separateness of persons to support or to criticize moral views. John Rawls thinks that the separateness of persons supports egalitarianism, while Robert Nozick believes that it supports a rights view. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts in favor of a particular (...) moral view the ‘positive connection.’ Both these writers think that utilitarianism is objectionable because it ignores the moral importance of the separateness of persons. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts against a moral view the ‘negative connection.’In this paper I will discuss several different attempts at explaining the connection between the separateness of persons and specific moral views. I will begin by describing how egalitarianism, unlike utilitarianism, treats individual lives as morally important units. I will discuss the kind of egalitarianism that aims at equality, but the same points could be made about egalitarian views that give priority to helping the worst off or require that everyone should receive at least a specified minimum share of resources or happiness. (shrink)

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@ jstor.org.

This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Robert Stern; VII*—The Relation between Moral Theory and Metaphysics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 143–160, h.

Virginia Held's Feminist Morality defends the idea that it is possible to transform the "public" sphere by remaking it on the model of existing "private" relationships such as families. This paper challenges Held's optimism. It is argued that feminist moral inquiry can aid in transforming the public sphere only by showing just how much the allegedly "private" realms of families and personal relationships are shaped-and often misshapen-by public demands and concerns.

Rawls and Nagel have suggested as a reason to act as morality requires is that we thereby express our nature as free and equal persons. The paper attempts describe the logic of such claims.

Utilitarianism seems to require us to sacrifice a person if doing so will produce a net increase in the amount of utility. This feature of utilitarianism is extremely unattractive. The puzzle is how to reject this requirement without rejecting the plausible claim that we are often wise to trade lesser amounts of utility for greater amounts. I argue that such a position is not as paradoxical as it may appear, so long as we understand the relationship between the value of (...) utility and the value of persons in a certain way. I argue that the traditional utilitarian position assumes an inadequate view of this relationship. I suggest a more plausible view of this relationship, one which implies that we may not sacrifice a person merely in order to produce a net gain in utility, where that utility does not result from the saving of any other persons' lives. (shrink)

Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking represents a great contribution to moral philosophy-in particular, by bringing women's "private" virtues into the public sphere. However, there remain problems in the analysis which need to be addressed: How can one possibly generalize about the practice of mothering from one, necessarily limited, perspective, given the facts of cultural diversity? Is Ruddick's normative account of mothering congruent with the reflective judgments of others? Is her account of the transformation of parochial mothering into feminist peace work viable? (...) After exploring these three questions, this reviewer calls, with Ruddick, for the telling of more maternal stories, from different cultural, racial and economic perspectives. (shrink)

Abstract:According to Shelly Kagan, “ordinary” or “moderate” moralists must establish the existence of “options.” Kagan considers a “negative” and a “positive” argument, which he regards as the most promising means by which moral moderates might establish their position. He offers objections to both, and he concludes that the moderate position is indefensible. I argue that Kagan fails in his attempt to discredit the negative argument. I also argue that the positive argument is so implausible that Kagan's elaborate criticism of it (...) is unnecessary. The positive argument is interesting nevertheless, because of why it cannot serve the moderate's purposes. (shrink)

Given the difficulties surrounding the attempt to defend constraints, we need to reconsider the possibility of defending options without assuming the existence of constraints. A view that incorporated options but not constraints would be a departure from ordinary morality, but might be attractive nonetheless. This chapter first explores the structure of such a theory, and then argues that it cannot avoid unacceptable implications unless it presupposes the moral relevance of one of the distinctions discussed in the two previous chapters, such (...) as the distinction between doing and allowing harm. But that distinction remains problematic and inadequately supported, even given the more limited use being made of it here. (shrink)

There is a hoary tradition in moral philosophy that assumes we cannot determine which moral theory is acceptable or correct unless we have available a correct theory of human nature, or, in its more modern form, of the person. With such a theory of the person, however, we could at least narrow down the choice among competing ethical theories. A more recent tradition, at least in one of its standard interpretations, agrees it would be necessary to have a correct theory (...) of the person before we could determine an acceptable moral theory, but it denies there is a determinate nature of the person to be captured in such a theory. The plasticity of the person, according to this strand of Marxist theory, rules out the possibility of there being universal moral theory at all. In this paper, I would like to explore a view that treads an intermediate path. It agrees with the Marxist denial that there is a determinate nature of the person, a deep fact of the matter, that can be abstracted from the social matrix and made the subject of a theory of the person. And, it agrees with both traditions that moral theory depends on and embodies a theory of the person. But, by making the problem of arriving at an acceptable view of the person itself something that depends on overall theoretical considerations, including moral ones, the intermediary, view may be able to avoid the type of moral relativism associated with the Marxist view. (shrink)

Robert Stern; VII*—The Relation between Moral Theory and Metaphysics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 143–160, h.