The Greatest Happiness Principle

FAIN: FB-50126-04

Julia Lynn Driver
Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH 03755-1808)

The project is a book length manuscript on the moral evaluation of actions and character traits. The book discusses an approach to moral evaluation--"consequentialism"--which maintains that the moral quality of actions and character traits is determined by the consequences or effects produced by the actions or character traits. This approach is contrasted with other approaches which hold that moral quality is determined by some intrinsic feature of the act, and not anything produced by it. The author favors the consequentialist approach and develops an alternative that is sensitive to recent criticisms of consequentialism, as well as "impartial" ethical theories more generally.

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