Samuel Scheffler
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 985195 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Samuel Scheffler |
| NOMBRES | Samuel |
| APELLIDO | Scheffler |
| FIRMA | SCHEFFLER S |
| AFILIACIONES | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 59 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 380 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 58 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1976 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
One Life to Lead
One Life to Lead
It is a truism that each of us has one life to lead. But we rarely ask what it means to lead a life, perhaps because the answer strikes us as obvious. In fact, though, leading one’s life requires that we negotiate some deeply puzzling aspects of our experience and overcome some profound challenges to our sense of ourselves and our place in the world. This book develops an “attachment-sensitive” conception of what it means to lead a recognizably h…
Humanity and the future
This article is a response to contributions by Tina Rulli and Jay Wallace to a symposium on my book Why Worry about Future Generations? I respond to questions Rulli raises about my ‘Value Dependence Thesis' and about the status of ‘meliorative projects’. I respond to questions Wallace raises about the nature of humanity as an object of love and attachment. I also address points he makes about the relation between reasons of beneficence and the at…
Why Worry About Future Generations?
Why should we care about what happens to human beings in the future, after we ourselves are long gone? Much of the contemporary philosophical literature on future generations has a broadly utilitarian orientation, and implicitly suggests that our primary reasons for concern about the fate of future generations are reasons of beneficence. This book proposes a different answer. Implicit in our existing values and evaluative attachments are a variet…
What is Egalitarianism?
One of the most significant theories of distributive justice to have emerged since the publication of A Theory of Justice is the form of distributive egalitarianism that Elizabeth Anderson has dubbed "luck egalitarianism". Luck egalitarianism overlaps with but also diverges from the prevailing political morality in most liberal societies, both with respect to the unacceptability of inequalities deriving from people's circumstances and with respec…
Membership and Political Obligation
Aging as a Normative Phenomenon
Many philosophers have discussed the normative significance of personal relationships. The implicit focus of most of these discussions is on the normative significance of active, ongoing relationships. But, of course, all relationships end eventually. This article focuses on relationships that end through the death of one of the participants. A relationship that has ended in this way can still be a source of reasons for the surviving participant.…
The Practice of Equality
This Chapter discusses two views of equality: the distributive view and the relational view. According to the first view, equality is an essentially distributive value. We can directly assess distributions as being more or less egalitarian, and justice requires that we strive to achieve fully egalitarian distributions, except insofar as other values forbid it. According to the relational view, equality is an ideal governing certain kinds of inter…
Death and the Afterlife
Even if we do not believe in a personal afterlife in which we survive our own deaths, we assume that there will be a “collective afterlife” in which humanity survives long after we are gone. Samuel Scheffler maintains that this assumption plays a surprising—indeed astonishing—role in our lives. In certain important respects, the future existence of people who are as yet unborn matters more to us than our own continued existence and the continued …
Death and the Afterlife Berkeley Tanner Lectures
"Suppose you knew that, though you yourself would live your life to its natural end, the earth and all its inhabitants would be destroyed thirty days after your death. To what extent would you remain committed to your current projects and plans? Would scientists still search for a cure for cancer? Would couples still want children? In Death and the Afterlife, philosopher Samuel Scheffler poses this thought experiment in order to show that the con…
On what matters, Volume one
This is the follow-up to Derek Parfit's 1984 book 'Reasons and Persons'. Parfit presents a powerful new treatment of reasons, rationality, and normativity, and a critical examination of three systematic moral theories - Kant's ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism - leading to his own ground-breaking synthetic conclusion
Cosmopolitanism, justice & institutions
Daedalus Summer 2008 ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is not–or not yet –the name of a determinate political philosophy. Although many contemporary theorists have put forward views that they describe as cosmopolitan, there is little agreement among them about the central elements of a cosmopolitan position. Almost nobody advocates the development of the kind of global state that would give the idea of ‘world citizenship’ literal application. Instead, disparate …
Immigration and the Significance of Culture
Is the Basic Structure Basic?
This essay focuses on Cohen’s recent arguments for extending the scope of justice beyond Rawls’s formulation. It argues for the merits of Rawls’s argument that the primary subject of justice should be restricted to social institutions. It contends that whether or not one agrees with Rawls’s view of what should count as the subject of justice, Cohen is wrong to understand the upshot of this to be either a paltry measure of redistribution or the ac…
Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive
I—Samuel Scheffler
Journal Article I—Samuel Scheffler: Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism Get access Samuel Scheffler Samuel Scheffler Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 July 2005, Pages 229–253, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-7013.2005.00134.x Published: 11 August 2015
Choice, circumstance, and the value of equality
Many recent political philosophers have attempted to demonstrate that choice and responsibility can be incorporated into the framework of an egalitarian theory of distributive justice. This article argues, however, that the project of developing a responsibility-based conception of egalitarian justice is misconceived. The project represents an attempt to defuse conservative criticism of the welfare state and of egalitarian liberalism more general…
Doing and Allowing
Reason and Value
Reason and Value collects fifteen brand-new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics - including especially his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value—make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. The volume honours Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizin…
Equality as the Virtue of Sovereigns
What is Egalitrianism
Rawls and Utilitarianism
In the Preface to A Theory of Justice, Rawls observes that "[d]uring much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some formof utilitarianism" (TJ, p. vii/xvii rev.). Critics of utilitarianism, he says, have pointed out that many of its implications run counter to our moral convictions and sentiments, but they have failed "to construct a workable and systematic moral conception to oppose it" (TJ, p. viii/xvii rev.). A…
Justice and Desert in Liberal Theory
Contemporary liberal theory appears to attach relatively little importance to the concept of desert. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is exemplary in this respect. Rawls explicitly argues that desert has only a derivative role to play in an adequate account of distributive justice, and he is frequently interpreted as advocating a purely institutional theory of desert, according to which people's deserts are in general to be identified with their …
Equality and Tradition
This collection of essays by noted philosopher Samuel Scheffler combines discussion of abstract questions in moral and political theory with attention to the normative dimension of current social and political controversies. In addition to chapters on more abstract issues such as the nature of human valuing, the role of partiality in ethics, and the significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, the volume also includes essays on imm…
Consequentialism and its critics
Introduction. 1. John Rawls: Classical Utilitarianism 2. Bernard Williams: Consequentialism and Integrity 3. Thomas Nagel: War and Massacre 4. T.M. Scanlon: Rights, Goals, and Fairness 5. Peter Railton: Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality 6. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints 7. Thomas Nagel: Autonomy and Deontology 8. Derek Parfit: Is Common-Sense Morality Self-Defeating? 9. Amartya Sen: Rights and Agency 10. Philippa Foot: Ut…
What is Egalitrianism
The Rejection of Consequentialism
Immigration and the Significance of Culture
Relationships and Responsibilities
The Rejection of Consequentialism
In this reconsideration of the case against consequentialism the author has now taken the opportunity to supplement the original work with three susbtantial subsequently published essays in which he responds to criticism of the book and further develops various of its themes and arguments
Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism
Lately there has been a renewal of interest among political philosophers and theorists in the idea of cosmopolitanism. However, there is little consensus among contemporary theorists about the precise content of a cosmopolitan position. This article calls attention to two different strands in recent thinking about cosmopolitanism. One strand presents it primarily as a doctrine about justice. The other presents it primarily as a doctrine about cul…
Choice, circumstance, and the value of equality
Many recent political philosophers have attempted to demonstrate that choice and responsibility can be incorporated into the framework of an egalitarian theory of distributive justice. This article argues, however, that the project of developing a responsibility-based conception of egalitarian justice is misconceived. The project represents an attempt to defuse conservative criticism of the welfare state and of egalitarian liberalism more general…
Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive
Membership and Political Obligation
Ethics, Personal Identity, and Ideals of the Person
It is not uncommon for contemporary moral philosophers to appeal, in support or in criticism of one moral theory or another, to supposed features of or facts about persons. Rawls, for example, maintains that ‘utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons,’ and that since ‘the correct regulative principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing,’ we should not expect utilitarianism to be the correct regulative sch…
Aging as a Normative Phenomenon
Many philosophers have discussed the normative significance of personal relationships. The implicit focus of most of these discussions is on the normative significance of active, ongoing relationships. But, of course, all relationships end eventually. This article focuses on relationships that end through the death of one of the participants. A relationship that has ended in this way can still be a source of reasons for the surviving participant.…
Cosmopolitanism, justice & institutions
Daedalus Summer 2008 ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is not–or not yet –the name of a determinate political philosophy. Although many contemporary theorists have put forward views that they describe as cosmopolitan, there is little agreement among them about the central elements of a cosmopolitan position. Almost nobody advocates the development of the kind of global state that would give the idea of ‘world citizenship’ literal application. Instead, disparate …
Prerogatives Without Restrictions
Consequentialists hold that the right act in any situation is the one that will produce the best overall outcome, as judged from an impersonal point of view. By contrast, many non-consequentialists maintain that, given any impersonal principle for ranking overall outcomes from best to worst, there will be some circumstances in which one is forbidden to produce the best available outcome so characterized, and still others in which one is permitted…
Equality as the Virtue of Sovereigns
Moral Judges and Human Ideals
Developing vision of morality that is at once compelling and comprehensive is an enormous task. The questions and answers all interlock, making it difficult to know where to start. Most of us, I think, just jump in, with whatever issue or controversy grabs us. We make what headway we can with the section of the moral puzzle on which we choose to work and hope or trust that when we or others work on other sections, the results will fit smoothly, c…
The Rejection of Consequentialism
Natural Rights, Equality, and the Minimal State 1
The idea of equality exerts considerable influence on our moral imaginations, yet it has remained philosophically elusive. Although men and women have thought equality worth dying for, philosophers have been largely unable to give any systematic account of its importance as a moral ideal, or of its function in moral and political theory.
Moral independence and the original position
Ethics, Personal Identity, and Ideals of the Person
It is not uncommon for contemporary moral philosophers to appeal, in support or in criticism of one moral theory or another, to supposed features of or facts about persons. Rawls, for example, maintains that ‘utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons,’ and that since ‘the correct regulative principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing,’ we should not expect utilitarianism to be the correct regulative sch…
After Virtue
The Rejection of Consequentialism
The Rejection of Consequentialism
In this reconsideration of the case against consequentialism the author has now taken the opportunity to supplement the original work with three susbtantial subsequently published essays in which he responds to criticism of the book and further develops various of its themes and arguments
The Rejection of Consequentialism
The Rejection of Consequentialism
Morality Through Thick and Thin a Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Prerogatives Without Restrictions
Consequentialists hold that the right act in any situation is the one that will produce the best overall outcome, as judged from an impersonal point of view. By contrast, many non-consequentialists maintain that, given any impersonal principle for ranking overall outcomes from best to worst, there will be some circumstances in which one is forbidden to produce the best available outcome so characterized, and still others in which one is permitted…
Human Morality
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Human Morality. By Samuel Scheffler. (New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Pp. 150. Price £22.50.) Gerald F. Gaus Gerald F. Gaus University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Bowling Green State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 43, Issue 172, July 1993, Pages 380–383, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219906 Published: 01 July 1993
Agent‐Centred Restrictions, Rationality, and the
Scheffler responds to Philippa Foot's argument that agent‐centred restrictions cease to appear paradoxical when considered in the light of a certain virtue‐based, non‐consequentialist theory. Foot argues that the ranking of states of affairs from best to worst owes its place within morality to the virtue of benevolence, but that other virtues such as justice limit the role of such rankings in morality. According to Scheffler, Foot suggests that m…
The Project and Its Motivation
The term ‘consequentialism’ refers to a class of moral theories that rank overall states of affairs and require agents to produce the best states of affairs they can. Bernard Williams and others have criticized consequentialism, saying that it undermines agents’ integrity by requiring them to view cherished personal projects from an impersonal perspective. In addition, the most well‐known consequentialist theory, classical utilitarianism, can be …
The Project Reconsidered
Defenders of agent‐centred restrictions might respond to the arguments of Ch. 4 by questioning the whole enterprise of trying to find a principled rationale for agent‐centred restrictions. Specifically, they might argue that the very idea of ranking states of affairs is flawed, and thus no rationale is required for agent‐centred restrictions. Scheffler responds that the idea of ranking states of affairs is not misguided, and that even if it were,…
Deontology and the Agent
Scheffler argues, in response to criticisms by Jonathan Bennett, that there is a non‐trivial sense of ‘agent‐centredness’ that applies to both an agent‐centred prerogative and agent‐centred restrictions. In further articulating this notion of agent‐centredness, Scheffler anticipates and responds to four objections that Bennett might make to his argument. He also discusses the relation between agent‐centredness and the doing/allowing distinction.
Outline of a New Theory of Normative Ethics
Provides an outline for a hybrid moral theory of the sort described in Ch. 1; Scheffler calls this theory the ‘distributive hybrid’. In order to accommodate concerns about agents’ integrity, the distributive hybrid incorporates an agent‐centred prerogative, allowing each agent to assign proportionately greater weight to his own interests than to those of other people. In order to accommodate concerns about distributive justice, the distributive h…
The Independence and Distinctness of the Personal Point of View
Explores the considerations underlying an agent‐centred prerogative and the considerations underlying a distribution‐sensitive conception of the good. Scheffler argues that, whether or not the integrity‐based objection to consequentialism succeeds, that objection nevertheless reveals a principled rationale for an agent‐centred prerogative: the prerogative is a rational strategy for taking into account the independence of the personal point of vie…
Prerogatives Without
Shelly Kagan and others have criticized the hybrid theory on the grounds that an agent‐centred prerogative, if unaccompanied by agent‐centred restrictions, might allow agents to harm others in pursuit of their personal projects. Scheffler considers in detail an example of Kagan's that illustrates this criticism and purports to show a conflict between the hybrid theory and common‐sense morality. Scheffler responds that the rationale supporting an …
The Defence of Agent‐Centred Restrictions
Scheffler searches for, but does not find, a principled rationale for including agent‐centred restrictions in a moral theory. He considers and rejects rationales that appeal to the disvalue of violating agent‐centred restrictions, to the independence of the personal point of view, and to other features of victims and agents. Overall, the chapter is a defence of what Scheffler calls the ‘independence thesis’, which holds that Ch. 3's principled ra…
The Appeal of Political Liberalism
Human Morality
This book defends a conception of morality as moderate in content and pervasive in scope, and as possessing an authority that derives in part from its deep roots in human psychology. According to Scheffler, the point of view of morality and that of enlightened self‐interest stand in a relation of potential congruence, a relation that he explains by reference to three central ideas. The first is that even though moral considerations and considerat…
Human Morality
Rejection of Consequentialism
Moral Judges and Human Ideals
Developing vision of morality that is at once compelling and comprehensive is an enormous task. The questions and answers all interlock, making it difficult to know where to start. Most of us, I think, just jump in, with whatever issue or controversy grabs us. We make what headway we can with the section of the moral puzzle on which we choose to work and hope or trust that when we or others work on other sections, the results will fit smoothly, c…
Reply to Three Commentators
Stephen Darwall's thoughtful essay focuses on my treatment of the authority of morality, and on the significance of my notion of motivation. Darwall says that the question of morality's authority, as I initially characterize it, is the normative question of how far our reasons to behave morally extend. Moreover, he suggests, it is this question that my overall project requires me to address. However, he says, throughout much of my subsequent disc…
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