The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions

by Samuel Scheffler

A philosophical investigation of the considerations underlying rival moral conceptions.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's really good about this book is the way it reconceives a lot of old moral problems.

Scheffler is always good at coming to philosophy from a really broad perspective. I like the way he's realistic about what his argument achieves and the way he talks about methodology in general.

Nice to read.

It's fuelled by this great observation that there's something paradoxical about restricting certain forms of behaviour based on evaluative grounds - e.g. we shouldn't ever kill - because in every example we can give of this, it's conceptually possible to come up with an example in which the restriction stops us from reaching a more evaluatively desirable goal - killing one person to save many others from being killed.

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clearly written and balanced exploration of the rationale behind consequentialist and agent-centered conceptions of morality. Quite interesting, and I think given Scheffler's modest attempts to simply demonstrate a rationale behind accepting agent-centered prerogatives, the book was fairly convincing.