Morality as Legislation: Rules and Consequences

by Alex Tuckness

Overview

'What would happen if everyone acted that way?' This question is often used in everyday moral assessments, but it has a paradoxical quality: it draws not only on Kantian ideas of a universal moral law but also on consequentialist claims that what is right depends on the outcome. In this book, Alex Tuckness examines how the question came to be seen as paradoxical, tracing its history from the theistic approaches of the seventeenth century to the secular accounts of the present. Tuckness shows that the earlier interpretations were hybrid theories that included both consequentialist and non-consequentialist elements, and argues that contemporary uses of this approach will likewise need to combine consequentialist and non-consequentialist commitments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009059626
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/12/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Alex Tuckness is Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University. He is the author of Locke and the Legislative Point of View (2002), The Decline of Mercy in Public Life (with John Michael Parrish, Cambridge University Press, 2014) and This is Political Philosophy (with Clark Wolf, 2016).

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. The Emergence of the Rule-consequentialist Paradox: 1. God and consequences: the path to Locke; 2. Legislators, architects, and spectators: the path to David Hume; 3. The great divide: Bentham and Paley; 4. Moral expression as legislation: J. S. Mill and Sidgwick; 5. Secular heterodoxy: twentieth century rule-utilitarianism; Part II. Contemporary Approaches to the Rule-consequentialist Paradox: 6. Four contemporary options for resolving the paradox; 7. A hybrid defense of the legislative perspective; Works cited; Index.