Person-affecting principle
The view that an action is wrong only if it affects someone for the worse.
What it commits you to
The person-affecting principle, defended by Hare and used by Parfit, holds that a change is bad only when it makes someone worse off. It seems to exclude repugnant conclusions that trouble total utilitarianism, and it also blocks many commons policies, since no one is made worse off and yet the policy is widely thought to be wrong. That failure is what motivated most of the modern population ethics literature.
Which realms lean on this
Ethics is where the realms argue about what counts: the parties, the pleasures, the duties, the care.
ethics · 9 realms — The Benthamite Foundry, The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Stoic Ramparts, The Ubuntu Weave, The Virtue Garden.
Canon that discusses this
modern · 2002
No Future Without a Past
Tutu argues from ubuntu — that a person becomes fully human through relationship with other people — to a politics of shared responsibility rather than blame. The formulation that matters for a governance question is the negative one: a future without the past that made it is not a future anyone can build on. The excerpt below paraphrases the essay rather than quoting it.
primary · 1863
Utilitarianism
Mill defends the intuitions Bentham's calculus was meant to replace: higher and lower pleasures, the justice principle that each person counts as one, and the liberty principle against the tyranny of the majority. Published the year after the Origin of Species, and much of the argument is a reply to the comparison.
modern · 1998
What We Owe to Each Other
Twenty-five years in the making and out in 1998. Scanlon argues that what we owe each other is that no one could reasonably reject the principles by which we are all to be governed, which grounds obligation in interpersonal reasons rather than in a chooser maximising an objective. The excerpt below paraphrases the argument rather than quoting the book.
See also
Total utilitarianism
ethicsThe view that the morally best action maximises total well-being across everyone affected.
Average utilitarianism
ethicsThe view that the morally best action maximises average well-being per person.
Consequentialism
ethicsJudging actions solely by the outcomes they produce.
Care ethics
ethicsObligations arise inside relationships, are partial, and resist general principles.