Why deontologists should reject agent-relative value and embrace agent-relative accountability
- PDF / 326,300 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 101 Downloads / 157 Views
Why deontologists should reject agent-relative value and embrace agent-relative accountability Rudolf Schuessler
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper claims that deontological and consequentialist ethics are best distinguished with reference to different assumptions concerning moral accountability and accounting. Deontological ethics can thereby be defended against the accusation of inordinate concern with the moral purity of agents. Moreover, deontological ethics can and should reject being based on the concept of agent-relative value. Even under the assumption that deontological ethics can be consequentialized, agent-relative value need not play a fundamental role. This is not the same as denying agent-relativity a key role in deontological ethics. Deontological moral accounting of universal value should be regarded as agent-relative, whereas consequentialist accounting assumes a shared moral account of all moral agents. Keywords Deontology · Consequentialization · Agent-relativity · Agent-relative value · Accountability
In recent decades, it has become commonplace to characterize deontological ethical theories as agent-relative (or agent-centered).1 But from whence does the agentrelativity of deontology2 or its moral reasons arise? The present paper claims that
1 See Ridge (2017). On the difficult business of delineating what makes ethics deontological, see Alexander and Moore (2016), Gaus (2001), McNaughton and Rawling (2007). For helpful comments and suggestions, I am grateful to Vuko Andri´c, Jonas Franzen, and the participants of the conference “Spheres of Morality” (Bremen, August 2018). Many thanks also to two anonymous referees who pressed me on important questions. 2
In the following used synonymously with deontological ethics.
R. Schuessler () Institute of Philosophy, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany E-Mail: [email protected]
R. Schuessler
deontological ethics are best characterized by the assumption of agent-relative moral accountability, and specifically a restricted form of accountability which, in contrast to consequentialist accountability, respects the separateness of persons. This claim has important implications for how agent-relativity is best understood to distinguish deontology and consequentialism, and for the justification of deontological constraints. Alternatively, deontological agent-relativity might also be based on the concept of agent-relative value. However, it is unnecessary and, as I proceed to show, detrimental to give agent-relative value a fundamental role for the conception of deontology. (It may, of course, play a secondary role because some innocuous values may be agent-relative). It is important in this respect that the concept of agent-relative value figures centrally in attempts to consequentialize deontological theories.3 Consequentializing, put shortly, is to formulate an ethical theory as a version of act consequentialism (see below). Some influential moral philosophers claim that every reasonable deontological ethical theory
Data Loading...
