ABSTRACT
The moral philosopher will at once recognize that the discourse of bureaucracy thus conceived reproduces the argumentative forms of utilitarianism. It is unavoidable that moral issues arise within one and the same area, then they must be disguised from the agent so that he can deal with them, so far as is humanly possible, as merely technical issues. Their moral and evaluative character must be relegated to a realm of latent presuppositions. The parallel with utilitarianism is maintained in the way in which the questions of what is to count as a consequence of some particular action or course of action arises for cost-benefit analyses. The use of cost-benefit analyses clearly presupposes a decision as to what is a cost and what a benefit; but more than that it presupposes some method of ordering costs and benefits so that what would be otherwise incommensurable becomes commensurable.
