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Nothing Personal: On the Limits of the Impersonal Temperament in Ethics

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator (New York: Good Press, 1874/2021), p. 1.

  2. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. (London: Penguin Books, 1886/1990), section 186.

  3. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Vintage Books, 1885/1967), bk. III, section 7.

  4. Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  5. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. (New York: Hackett, 1863/1997), ch 3.

  6. David Benatar, “Still better never to have been: a reply to (more of) my critics,” The Journal of Ethics 17 (2013): 121-151, p. 124.

  7. Jeff McMahan, “Asymmetries in the morality of causing people to exist”. in David Wasserman, ed., Harming Future Persons (London: Springer, 2009), 49-68.

  8. Ibid., 125.

  9. David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce? (London: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 35.

  10. Ibid., p. 51.

  11. David Benatar, “Suicide: A qualified defence”, in James Stacey Taylor, ed., The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death: New Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 235.

  12. Ibid., p. 236.

  13. William James, Pragmatism (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1907/1975).

  14. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 281.

  15. Geert Hofstede, Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001); Meredith F Small, Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children. (New York: Random House, 2002).

  16. Tina Rulli, “Preferring a genetically-related child,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 13, (2016); Travis N Rieder, “Procreation, adoption and the contours of obligation,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 32, (2015): 301-302; Rivka Weinberg, The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible (London: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 2.

  17. Tina Rulli, “The unique value of adoption”, in Carolyn McLeod, ed., Family-Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges. (London: Oxford University Press, 2014).

  18. On agent-relativity and agent-neutrality, see Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); David McNaughton and Piers Rawling, “Value and Agent-Relative Reasons,” Utilitas 7 (1995): 31-47. This distinction in temperaments is very close to what Nagel called the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ perspectives in philosophy, see Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

  19. Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit., p. 79.

  20. David Benatar, The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 16.

  21. Ibid., p. 18; Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 594.

  22. Benatar, op. cit., p. 25.

  23. Ibid., p. 26.

  24. Ibid., p. 23.

  25. Ibid., p. 36.

  26. Nozick, op. cit., pp. 436, 601-604.

  27. Benatar, op. cit., p. 55.

  28. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (New York: Vintage, 2010), section 108.

  29. Benatar, op. cit., p. 63.

  30. Ibid., p. 40.

  31. John Arthur, “World Hunger and moral obligation : The case against Singer”, in Steven M. Cahn, ed., Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology (London: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  32. For an excellent summary of the dilemma facing the consequentialist moral rationalist, see Douglas W. Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality (London: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  33. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, op. cit., section 1.

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    Nicholas Smyth

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Smyth, N. Nothing Personal: On the Limits of the Impersonal Temperament in Ethics. J Value Inquiry 56, 67–83 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09887-5

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