1. Discuss Williams’s critique of utilitarianism, and the responses to it by Railton and Scheffler. Would a
commitment to consequentialist morality necessarily lead to alienation or undermine the integrity of
the agent? Is consequentialism worse in this respect than other accounts of impartial morality (such
as Korsgaard’s or Wallace’s)?
2. Explain Scheffler’s idea of the independence of the personal point of view, illustrating your discussion
with reference to Williams on utilitarian and Kantian conceptions of morality. How would Korsgaard
respond to this concern? Does she succeed in showing that valuing concrete ends (in the way bound
up with having a “practical identity”) commits us to valuing humanity as an end in itself? Why or why
not?
3. Discuss the idea that morality incorporates “agent-centered restrictions” (or deontological
constraints). Compare and contrast the defenses of such restrictions implicit in Foot’s “natural
goodness” approach and in Wallace’s relational view. Do these authors succeed in defending agentcentered restrictions against Scheffler’s suggestion that they are inherently paradoxical?
4. Critically assess the approaches of Korsgaard and Wallace, considered as responses to Anscombe’s
contention that we should jettison the concept of moral obligation. Does one or the other of these
philosophers present a plausible interpretation of moral obligation? Or should we follow Foot in doing
ethics without assuming that there is a special class of moral obligations? If there are moral
obligations, how might they interact with the personal demands that are grounded in our basic
projects and commitments and practical identities?
5. Critically engage with the following approaches to the relation between rightness and goodness: (a)
The right action is the one that produces the best state of affairs; (b) the right action is the one that
would be performed by the person who is good as a human being; (c) right actions make it possible
for agents to relate to others in valuable ways (e.g. interpersonal recognition). Which of these
approaches seems to you to provide the most plausible interpretation of the connection of morality to
the good?