Introduction

Summary

The Introduction to Morality as Legislation: Rules and Consequences explains the difference between a situated perspective where a person asks which act should be performed in a particular instance and a legislative perspective where one asks what rule should apply to a whole class of people in given circumstances. The legislative perspective seems to have advantages in terms of coming to more plausible moral conclusions but does not fit neatly into either consequentialist or Kantian categories as it uses consequentialist considerations to select among possible rules while being unable to explain why the question “which rule?” is the relevant question on purely consequentialist grounds. The Introduction describes four different dimensions along which conceptions of the legislative perspective can vary and two contextual dimensions as to where it is employed: political and nonpolitical contexts and legislative and nonlegislative contexts. The Introduction clarifies the goals of the book and provides summaries of the following chapters.