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The Consequences of Rejecting the Moral Relevance of the Doing–Allowing Distinction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2010

BASHSHAR HAYDAR
BASHSHAR HAYDAR*
Affiliation:
American University of Beirutbahji@aub.edu.lb
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Abstract

The claim that one is never morally permitted to engage in non-optimal harm doing enjoys a great intuitive appeal. If in addition to this claim, we reject the moral relevance of the doing–allowing distinction, then we should also accept the claim that one is never morally permitted to engage in non-optimal harm allowing. Those who want to reject the conclusion of the above argument usually do so by defending the moral relevance of the doing–allowing distinction. In this short essay, I propose a different take on the argument in question. Instead of opting to reject its conclusion by defending the moral relevance of the doing–allowing distinction, I argue that the argument fails due to internal inconsistency. I argue that, once we reject the moral relevance of the doing–allowing distinction, we can no longer rely on the strong intuitive appeal of the claim that one is never morally permitted to engage in non-optimal harm doing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 222 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1993), p. 222Google Scholar.

2 It should be pointed out that Singer does not ultimately rest his case for the moral failure of relatively affluent people to donate all their disposable income to alleviate extreme poverty on the rejection of the doing–allowing distinction. Instead, he builds his case on an analogy between failing to help the poor and failing to rescue a person drowning in front of one's eyes.

3 See for example Scheffler, Samuel, ‘Prerogatives without Restrictions’, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford, 1994), pp. 182–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Shelly Kagan advances this kind of argument in ‘Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984), p. 252.

5 Bennett, Jonathan, The Act Itself (Oxford, 1995), p. 143Google Scholar.

6 While consequentialist moral doctrines would permit optimal killing of innocent people (where killing is necessary for generating more overall good), deontological moral doctrines typically would prohibit optimal as well as non-optimal killing of innocent people.

7 I am grateful to Bana Bashour, Roger Crisp, and Oliver Conolly for their valuable comments and suggestions.