¹ Scheffler, S., The Rejection of Consequentialism, Oxford, 1982Google Scholar; Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, p. 27Google Scholar; Nagel, T., The View from Nowhere, Oxford, 1986, chs. 8, 9Google Scholar; Darwall, S., ‘Agent-Centred Restrictions from the Inside Out”, Philosophical Studies, 1 (1986), 291–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pettit, P., ‘Universalizability without Utilitarianism”, Mind, xcvi (1987), 74–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P., ‘Agent-Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction”, Philosophical Studies, lxiii (1991), 167–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P., ‘Honouring and Promoting Values”, Ethics, cii (1992), 835–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P., ‘Deontology and Agency”, The Monist, lxxvi (1993), 81–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dancy, J., Moral Reasons, Oxford, 1993, chs. 10, 11.Google Scholar

² The terminology we use here is that of Kagan, Shelly (The Limits of Morality, Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar. This terminology is neither universal (Scheffler, for example, calls the former ‘agent-centred restrictions” and the latter ‘agent-centred prerogatives”) nor uncontentious, since deontologists can rightly complain that the notion of an option is one that makes sense only from within a fundamentally consequentialist framework. However, the terms have the advantages of familiarity and brevity.

³ Parfit, , pp. 27 and 104.Google Scholar

⁴ See Nagel, 's The View from NowhereGoogle Scholar, and Korsgaard, 's ‘The Reasons We Can Share: An Attack on the Distinction between Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Values”, Social Philosophy and Policy, x (1993), 24–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, references to Nagel and Korsgaard are references to these publications.

⁵ Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, B., Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 98–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ ‘Agent-Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction”, § II. Our account is not far from Nagel's formal account in The Possibility of Altruism, Oxford, 1970.Google Scholar

⁷ This somewhat lengthy wording is in part a response to a worry raised by Frances Howard-Snyder in correspondence: the fact that you cannot comply perfectly with a rule does not entail that it does not require you to do anything.

⁸ We shall not go into the reasons for the syntactic/genuine agent-relative distinction here: see ‘Deontology and Agency”, § II, for details.

⁹ ‘z” is introduced here only to exhibit structural symmetry; strictly speaking the reference is redundant.

¹⁰ See ‘Agent-Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction”, § III.

¹¹ Our thanks to Frances Howard-Snyder for emphasizing this to us – see her ‘The Heart of Consequentialism”, Philosophical Studies, lxxvi (1994), 107–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good, Oxford, 1930, ch. 2Google Scholar. References to Ross are to this work.

¹³ At one point she seems to suggest that she does not really intend to attack the distinction as such. ‘My quarrel … is really with Nagel's account of the source of these reasons, which suggests that values and reasons originate either from personal, idiosyncratic desires or from metaphysical realities of some kind” (p. 26 n. 6). In mounting that attack she does deny, however, that deontological reasons are agent-relative. Since we think this claim is not only false but robs the deontologist of an essential tool in defining his position, her arguments need to be rebutted.

¹⁴ This is not to say that they do not apply to everyone; the agent-relative rule against killing the innocent is a rule which applies to every agent but which gives each a different aim: that he not kill the innocent even if, thereby, he could prevent more killings of the innocent.

¹⁵ It follows that no two people can share any individual reason which is author-object agent-relative, in virtue of its author agent-relativity.

¹⁶ In § IV of her paper Korsgaard argues that this picture of options, which we find in Nagel, is not adequate. In her discussion of Nagel's account of deontology, however, she employs Nagel's conception of the matter.

¹⁷ That Korsgaard assimilates constraints to options is shown by the fact that she offers as a comparison to Nagel's example the case where I have a project to climb Kilimanjaro.

¹⁸ Personal duties to self perhaps also generate reasons that are the business only of their proprietor; we shall not deal with these here.

¹⁹ We make this point in response to a criticism levelled by Jonathan Dancy.

²⁰ Thanks to David Owens for pointing us in the right direction here.

²¹ Note that we are not claiming that people can be wronged only if wrong is done – people can be wronged, and have special grounds for complaint, even in cases where the right act is performed. This explains the regret on the part of an agent even when he knows he did the right thing in breaching a pro tanto rule at some specific person's expense: he does not regret the act per se, but he regrets that he wronged that individ ual, and might well owe him amends.

²² On pp. 48–9 of her article, Korsgaard seems to equate neutral reasons with intersubjective and objective reasons. Since moral reasons are intersubjective they cannot, on her view, be relative.

²³ This is the solution Ross canvasses in the case of the principles of promise-keeping and beneficence; the former generally taking precedence over the latter. Similarly for the principles of non-maleficence and beneficence. See Ross, , The Right and the Good.Google Scholar

²⁴ Note that we are not claiming that (16) has no part to play in a deontological system; only that it will not help us here.

²⁵ Kuflik, Arthur, ‘A Defense of Common-Sense Morality”, Ethics, xcvi (1986), 784–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ We are grateful to Roger Crisp, Jonathan Dancy, Brad Hooker, Frances Howard-Snyder, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Stratton-Lake, the members of the philosophy departments at Keele and Sheffield universities, and anonymous referees for their insightful comments. Piers Rawling wishes to acknowledge the University of Missouri Research Board and NEH (Summer Stipend 1993) for financial support.