ABSTRACT
Liberalism’s insistence on the moral priority of what we want is more than just mistaken: it is also deeply damaging to morality. In this chapter, I intend to make good this claim, so as to round off my argument against liberal morality by raising questions about the direction taken by contemporary moral debate, whose parameters it controls. I shall argue that the idea that wanting something constitutes a moral argument in its favour serves to obscure and obfuscate questions of right and wrong, not least because it concentrates attention solely on those people immediately concerned. The discussion will focus on the notion of harm, so I shall start by explaining why I have chosen to set the argument up in this way.
