Analyse & Kritik

Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory

Suchergebnisse

"R. Jay Wallace"

Titel: Autonomie, Charakter und praktische Vernunft: Überlegungen am Beispiel des Utilitarismus
Autor: R. Jay Wallace
Seite: 213-230

Abstract: This paper explores the question whether utilitarianism is compatible with the autonomy of the moral agent. The paper begins by considering Bernard Williams' famous complaint that utilitarianism cannot do justice to the personal projects and commitments constitutive of character. Recent work (by Peter Railton among others) has established that a utilitarian agent need not be free of such personal projects and commitments, and could even affirm them morally at the level of second-order reflection. But a different and more subtle problem confronts this approach: the use of utilitarian principles to justify the cultivation of personal projects and attachments undermines the autonomy to support this objection, according to which autonomy is a matter of acting in a way one can reflectively endorse.

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