ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes and discusses Wolf's ideas, and emphasizes three interrelated themes: incommensurability, the conception of action guidance offered by normative ethics and how these first two ideas relate to Parfit's concerns about disagreement and reality. Wolf suggests that the attempt to synthesize Kantianism, Scanlonian contractualism and rule consequentialism is unwise, mainly because these theories see different features of our lives as being ethically significant and because they cast many of the same moral features differently. Wolf thinks that Kantianism, contractualism and consequentialism all capture something important about value and about how to lead and make sense of ethical life. For Wood, there is a profound difference between the method he sees in Kant, Bentham and Mill, and which he endorses, and the method as assumed and employed by Sidgwick and Parfit. In addition, and more intriguingly, Wood's criticisms echo some of Wolf's in a way that may not be immediately apparent.
