ABSTRACT
One of the most notable features of act-utilitarianism and of act-consequentialism generally is its appeal from the standpoint of impersonal benevolence. But recent discussions have also focused on another common-sense exception to the utilitarian (consequentialist) notion that considerations of what is best from an impersonal standpoint decide what actions are obligatory. Agent-sacrificing anti-consequentialist permissions have not always, however, been ignored by philosophers. W. D. Ross, for example, discusses these permissions at some length, accepting their validity and even attempting to explain why utilitarianism fails to take them into account. Agent-sacrificing permissions are clearly unacceptable from the standpoint of impersonal morality, for strict consequentialism must hold that one is not (other things being equal) permitted to sacrifice one’s own (greater) good (for the sake of another’s lesser good). Of course, even apart from the difficulty of motivating the self-other asymmetry, the justification of common-sense morality faces many other problems.
