In this paper, I argue that Taurek’s positive view, namely that we ought to show equal respect and concern to those affected by our actions, commits him to saving the bigger number in some cases. This leads to an adjustment of his negative claim, namely that numbers don’t count. Numbers don’t count in the sense he was interested in, i.e., sums of harms or benefits (across different people) lack moral significance. Numbers do count, however, when considering how to act fairly which is what equal respect demands. This adjustment supports Taurek’s general view on how to think about moral matters.

This paper reevaluates the importance of John Taurek’s article “Should the Numbers Count?” putting his arguments in the context of work on the role of love in ethics. We can fruitfully read Taurek as attempting to ground a duty of beneficence in love. Taurek’s article should be read as having three distinct strands of thought. It articulates beneficence as responding to a value that is non-aggregative, criticizes the aggregation of human value as such, and assumes that beneficence has a very wide scope – from ordinary helping actions to disaster cases. What critics overlook is that even if there is some aggregative account of human value, Taurek gives powerful reasons for thinking that it is patently not the value typically taken to underlie our duty of beneficence. This leaves us, however, with difficult questions about the scope and limits of the duty of beneficence – and so of love – in ethics.