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23 results

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  • Ending Print Publication After December 2022 Issue

  • Ben Eggleston
  • Journal:
    Utilitas / Volume 34 / Issue 4 / December 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    11 October 2022, p. 367
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  • A Letter from the New Editor

  • Ben Eggleston
  • Journal:
    Utilitas / Volume 34 / Issue 3 / September 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 August 2022, p. 241
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  • Conflicts of Rules in Hooker's Rule-Consequentialism

  • Ben Eggleston
  • Journal:
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy / Volume 37 / Issue 3 / September 2007
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2020, pp. 329-349

  • It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties.

    —John Stuart Mill

    Just about any proponent of a rule-based theory of morality must eventually confront the question of how to resolve conflicts among the rules that the theory endorses. Is there a priority rule specifying which rules must yield to which, as in Rawls's lexical ordering of the first principle of his theory of justice over the second? Must the agent intuitively balance considerations, as in certain forms of intuitionist pluralism? Or might there be some other conflict-resolving provision? Brad Hooker, a defender of a rule-based theory of morality that he calls ‘rule-consequentialism,’ confronts this question about conflicts of rules in his recent book Ideal Code, Real World: A rule-Consequentialism Theory of Morality. In this paper, I examine Hooker's answer to this question, and I argue that his answer fails to solve a serious problem that arises from such conflicts.

  • Consequentialism and Respect: Two Strategies for Justifying Act Utilitarianism

  • Ben Eggleston
  • Journal:
    Utilitas / Volume 32 / Issue 1 / March 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 April 2019, pp. 1-18
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  • Most arguments in support of act utilitarianism are elaborations of one of two basic strategies. One is the consequentialist strategy. This strategy relies on the consequentialist premise that an act is right if and only if it produces the best possible consequences and the welfarist premise that the value of a state of affairs is entirely determined by its overall amount of well-being. The other strategy is based on the idea of treating individuals respectfully and resolving conflicts among individuals in whatever way best conforms to that idea. Although both of these strategies can be used to argue for the principle of act utilitarianism, they are significantly different from each other, and these differences cause them to have different strengths and weaknesses. It emerges that which argumentative strategy is chosen by a proponent of act utilitarianism has a large impact on which virtues her view has and which objections it is vulnerable to.

The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism
  • Edited by Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    30 January 2014
  • Utilitarianism, the approach to ethics based on the maximization of overall well-being, continues to have great traction in moral philosophy and political thought. This Companion offers a systematic exploration of its history, themes, and applications. First, it traces the origins and development of utilitarianism via the work of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and others. The volume then explores issues in the formulation of utilitarianism, including act versus rule utilitarianism, actual versus expected consequences, and objective versus subjective theories of well-being. Next, utilitarianism is positioned in relation to Kantianism and virtue ethics, and the possibility of conflict between utilitarianism and fairness is considered. Finally, the volume explores the modern relevance of utilitarianism by considering its practical implications for contemporary controversies such as military conflict and global warming. The volume will be an important resource for all those studying moral philosophy, political philosophy, political theory, and history of ideas.

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