Consequentialism and Its Critics

Consequentialism, a moral doctrine that asserts that the right act in any given situation is the one that will produce the best overall outcome, as judged from an impersonal standpoint that gives equal weight to all interests, has been criticized on the grounds that it fails to capture the most crucial features of moral thinking and cannot, when worked out in detail, provide an adequate account of morality. In this anthology, distinguished scholars—Thomas Nagel, T. M. Scanlon, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Samuel Scheffler, Conrad D. Johnson, Bernard Williams, Peter Railton, Amartya Sen, Philippa Foot, and Derek Parfit—debate arguments for and against consequentialism to present a complete view of this significant area in moral philosophy.