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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2018
I argue that direct consequentialism is not rationally believable. I focus on duties of love. Those feelings are so fundamental to us that believing consequentialism creates insanity. For it entails negative judgements not just about our loyal acts, but also about our deepest feelings. If direct consequentialism is true we should be able to believe it and stay sane. But we cannot, so it is not true.
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22 He wrote: ‘his motivating thought, fully spelled out, would be the thought that it was his wife’ (Moral Luck, p. 18; my emphasis).
23 Williams, Moral Luck, pp. 17–19.
24 See Zangwill, ‘Cordelia's Bond and Indirect Consequentialism’.
25 Williams, Moral Luck, p. 52.
26 This article was presented at Torquad Di Tella, in Buenos Aires. Thanks for helpful questions from Horacio Spector and Eduardo Rivera Lopez. Thanks also for comments from Brad Hooker, Geoffrey Scarre and a referee for this journal.
