Kantsequentialism and Agent-Centered Restrictions

On a given moral view, an agent-centred restriction (hereafter, simply ‘restriction’) prohibits agents from performing acts of a certain type, even if doing so would prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act-type. 

In this chapter of the forthcoming book Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends, the author argues that, with respect to accommodating restrictions, one ought to: (1) favour the teleological approach over the side-constraint approach; (2) favour an act-consequentialist approach over a non-consequentialist, teleological approach (such as Ross’s); and (3) favour a Kantsequentialist approach over a non-Kantsequentialist, act-consequentialist approach. 

This leads to the conclusion that, in accommodating restrictions, Kantsequentialism should be preferred over its theoretical rivals. Kantsequentialism is a novel moral theory that integrates key strengths of both Kantianism and utilitarianism.

Douglas W. Portmore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Currently, he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy. His research focuses on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two, but he has also written on well-being, moral worth, posthumous harm, moral responsibility, and the non-identity problem.