The demandingness of Scanlon's contractualism

摘要: Utilitarianism has long faced the objection that it is unreasonably demanding. One of reasons why Kantian contractualism been seen as an appealing alternative seems to be able avoid utilitarianism’s extreme demandingness, while retaining a fully impartial moral point view. I will argue contractualist obligations help others when their basic interests are at stake just demanding utilitarian obligations. My discussion focus on Thomas Scanlon’s formulation contractualism, since take most developed and powerful version account individual There two main contexts in which such arise. The first context emergency situations; central features emergencies persons’ stake, agent position give help. term ‘emergency’ also generally used refer short-term rare episodes. steady state chronic malnutrition kills millions each year does not count emer-