Dutilitarianism

Abstract

Dutilitarianism is the view that the most plausible theory of normative ethics is a compromise between utilitarianism and duty ethics. I discuss several proposals for how to spell out the dutilitarian theory and point out that a version of Arrow's impossibility theorem is applicable: Any attempt to aggregate utilitarianism and duty ethics into a dutilitarian theory will turn either the utilitarian or the deontological theory into a "dictator theory" that unilaterally determines the ranking of the hybrid theory, provided that a small number of seemingly plausible conditions are satisfied. However, this does not show that it is impossible to aggregate utilitarianism and duty ethics into a dutilitarian theory; a more plausible conclusion is that dutilitarians must reject one of Arrow's conditions. I argue that dutilitarians should reject the Ordering condition (rather than Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives). If so, clashes between utilitarianism and duty ethics are best understood as cases in which moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees. The article ends by considering a generalization of Arrow's theorem presented by Khmelnitskaya, which has recently been discussed in a different context by Hedden and Nebel. My gradualist approach to dutilitarianism avoids Khmelnitskaya's impossibility theorem in a manner that differs from the solution proposed by Hedden and Nebel.