Morality As Legislation : Rules and Consequences

'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. "I choose to begin the historical survey in the 17th century. While one can perhaps find earlier versions of the legislative perspective, the goal of the historical survey is not to provide a complete genealogy of the idea but rather to map a transition from one way of thinking to another. This chapter describes the use of the legislative perspective in a school of thought interested in natural law and natural rights with an empiricist aspect. They argued for the existence of transcultural, transhistorical moral principles but also believed that in order to identify those principles one needed to know something about the likely consequences of people trying to act on a rule"-- Provided by publisher Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations with Method of Citation 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 Hume 3 The Great Divide: Bentham and Paley 4 Moral Expression as Legislation: 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 Morality as Legislation examines consequentialist and non-consequentialist interpretations of the question 'what would happen if everyone acted that way?' It will appeal to readers interested in both the history of morality and contemporary debates about the nature of morality.