Deontology, Responsibility, and Equality

Book excerpt: Three questions that loom large in moral and political philosophy are these: Can deontological moral constraints be justified? When, if ever, are we morally responsible for what we do? How is the ideal of equality best configured? Deontology, Responsibility and Equality deals with selected aspects of these three broad questions. It critically discusses certain attempts by Frances Kamm and Thomas Nagel (among others) to account for the impermissibility of minimizing violations in terms of moral status. Also, it challenges the view that there is a morally relevant difference between doing and allowing harm and, especially, between killing and letting die. In relation to the second question, it concentrates on recent developments within compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility prompted by the work of Harry Frankfurt. It challenges his purported refutation of the principle of alternative possibilities as well as certain positive compatibilist, identification- based accounts of respon