The limits of human nature

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 49, Issue 197, 1999, Pages 452-470

  Horton, Keith ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0038144201     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00153     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. See D. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford UP, 1984), p. 30. In this paper I shall be exclusively concerned with individualistic forms of consequentialism
2. See, for example, J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 977)) p. 133
3. J. Griffin, Value Judgement: Improving our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford UP, 1996), pp. 88-9
4. See Mackie pp. 133-4
5. B.A.O. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Harvard UP, 1985), p. 212 fn. 7
6. R. Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 125
7. I borrow the term 'moral sources' from Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge UP, 1989); see esp. ch. 4
8. Review of Kagan's The Limits of Morality, Mind, 99 (1990), pp. 128-31, at pp. 129-30
9. For a sensible treatment of these matters, see D. Scoccia, 'Utilitarianism, Sociobiology and the Limits of Benevolence', Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990), pp. 329-45, though he too concedes without argument the claim that 'there is nothing one can do significantly to increase the strength of one's benevolence energies' (pp. 332, 338)
10. S. Oyama, 'Essentialism, Women and War: Protesting Too Much, Protesting Too Little', in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds), The Philosophy of Biology (Oxford UP, 1991), pp. 414-26, at p. 422
11. See also H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907), esp. p. 434, for an important early version of this claim
12. P. Railton, 'Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality', in S. Scheffler (ed.), Consequentialism and its Critics (Oxford UP, 1988), pp. 93-133
13. F. Jackson, 'Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection', Ethics, 101 (1991), pp. 461-82, at p. 480
14. R. Crisp, 'Utilitarianism and the Life of Virtue', The Philosophical Quarterly, 42 (1992), pp. 139-60, at pp. 157-8
15. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 111 v, 1113b 6-14
16. On this issue, see Taylor, e.g., pp. 31-2, 332-3, 515-17
17. S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 295
18. Cf. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, tr. M. McGregor (Cambridge UP, 1991), VI 457
19. See P. Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge UP, 1986), ch. 12, for another example of the assumption that what is needed to make up any motivational shortfall in relation to consequentialism is a demonstration that rigorous moral endeavour can be shown to be in the agent's interests
20. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals VI 420
21. R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 201
22. See Hare ch. 11; cf. Taylor p. 87