Moral Immorality: Consequentialist justifications of wrongdoing

João da Rocha Rodrigues is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society (CEPS), and has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Minho. His current PhD project is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). It focuses on the problem of acceptable partiality in ethics, as well as the ethical theories that reconcile it with impartial moral demands. He has also published on utilitarianism and presented academic work at conferences about retributive justice, toleration, and the philosophy of Thomas Nagel. His other research interests include the history of ideas, and he has co-edited a volume on the history of political thought titled Antigos e Modernos: Uma Introdução à História do Pensamento Político.

There are many varieties of consequentialist moral theories, but their common element is that they class right action as the one that leads to the best consequences impartially considered. In Bentham’s famous dictum, “Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one.” Due to this emphasis on impartiality, consequentialism has had trouble accommodating seemingly acceptable forms of partiality. It seems either impossible, undesirable, or at the very least not blameworthy, to act partially in a variety of circumstances. Two different consequentialist strategies for solving these difficulties will be evaluated here. The first is rule consequentialism, which shifts the focus of consequentialism from actions to rules. In this way, certain rules that sanction partiality can be accepted since they lead to better overall outcomes. The second strategy is Derek’s Parfit argument for moral immorality. Parfit argues that the development of certain dispositions that lead to partial behaviors can be sanctioned by consequentialism because these too lead, generally, to better outcomes; even if they also result, predictably, in immoral behavior by the consequentialist’s own standards. It is an extremely interesting form of moral argument that tries to justify, paradoxically, doing what is known to be wrong. Both of these strategies will be found to be lacking and not fully to resolve consequentialism’s issue with partiality.