Vagueness in the phrase ‘can know’ aside, the principle of (Access) An act is obligatory only if its agent can know that it is obligatory is an important principle, worthy of serious scrutiny. Its truth or falsity bears on the question of whether moral rightness, obligatoriness, etc., are a matter of factors ‘internal’ to an agent (such as motives and beliefs), or whether ‘external’ factors (such as consequences) are relevant to determining the moral normative status of acts. Moreover, Access enjoys considerable intuitive support. If I destroy Greensboro in Professor Sorensen's example by pushing the wrong button, I seem to have a good excuse to give to anyone who would accuse me of wrongdoing: ‘I had no way of knowing that this action would be wrong!’ But if I have a good excuse, then pushing the button does not seem wrong; and if that action is not wrong, then I had no obligation to refrain from pushing that button.

Elsewhere I have defended utilitarianism as a philosophy peculiarly well suited to the conduct of public affairs, on grounds of the peculiar tasks and instruments confronting public officials. Here I add another plank to that defence of ‘utilitarianism as a public philosophy’, focusing on the peculiar role responsibilities of people serving in public capacities. Such ‘public service utilitarianism’ is incumbent not only upon public officials but also upon individuals in their capacities as citizens and voters. I close with reflections on how best to evoke appreciation of these utilitarian role responsibilities from officials and electors alike.

The levelling-down objection rejects the egalitarian view that it is intrinsically good to eliminate the inequality of an outcome by lowering the relevant good of those better off to the level of those worse off. Larry Temkin suggests that the position underlying this objection is an exclusionary version of the person-affecting view, in which an outcome can be better or worse only if persons are affected for better or worse. Temkin then defends egalitarianism by rejecting this position. In this essay, I avoid Temkin's conclusion by arguing that the levelling-down objection is best understood as resting on an alternative position, which involves a distinction between those non-person-affecting ideals that posit value as tied to individuals in a particular manner and those that do not. Taken as the basis of the levelling-down objection, this position allows us consistently to reject egalitarianism while accepting many plausible non-person-affecting ideals.

What I call hegemonism holds that a satisfactory moral theory must in a fairly direct way guide action. This, the hegemonist believes, provides a constraint on moral theorizing. We should not accept moral theories which cannot in the proper sense guide us. There are two alternatives to hegemonism. One is motivational indirection, which is the idea that while agents remain motivated by a moral theory, they may be only indirectly motivated. The other is non-hegemonism, which holds that a correct moral theory need not in any direct or indirect sense guide or motivate actions. In the main part of the paper I discuss widely endorsed objections to motivational indirection and nonhegemonism, and I argue that these objections all fail. Hence, motivational indirection and non-hegemonism remain viable conceptions of moral theory.