The Ethics of Agency: An Alternative Approach to Normative Ethics

The chapter begins with a brief history of moral philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The history focuses on the methodological and substantive contributions of Moore, Ayer, Rawls, and Hare, and shows how their contributions have by and large set the agenda for present-day normative ethics. Problems with that agenda, especially with Rawls’s methods of reflective equilibrium and avoidance, are presented, and an alternative agenda is suggested. The alternative begins with a defence of moral rationalism and then proceeds, via a constitutivist theory of reasons for action, to a derivation of a novel ethics of agency that consists of two moral principles—Help, but Don’t interfere—and a non-moral principle—Do what you want—that must be weighed against each other. Some novel philosophical problems raised by the ethics of agency are identified for further consideration.