The Download of the Week (an understatement) is Climbing the Mountain by Derek Parfit. Here is are some bits from the abstract (or analytic table of contents, which is superb, by the way):
From Chapter Three: " As well as asking ‘What do I have most reason to do?’, we can ask what ‘What ought I morally to do?’ If these questions could have conflicting answers, and we often had most reason to act wrongly, morality would be undermined. Though reasons are, in this way, more fundamental, the rest of this book is about morality. In discussing morality, we shall be discussing some of the reasons that most need discussing, because they raise the most difficult questions. And, before we can decide whether and when we might have either sufficient or decisive reasons to act wrongly, we must know more about which acts are wrong, and what makes them wrong."
From Chapter Four: "We act wrongly, Kant claims, when we treat people in any way to which they cannot possibly consent. This claim may seem to imply that it is always wrong to coerce or deceive people, since these may seem to be acts whose nature makes consent impossible. But that is not relevantly true.
Kant’s claim can be interpreted in two ways. On the Choice-Giving Principle, it is wrong to treat people in any way to which they cannot actually give or refuse consent, because we have not given them the power to choose how we treat them. This principle is clearly false. On the Consent Principle, it is wrong to treat people in any way to which they could not rationally consent, if they knew the relevant facts, and we gave them the power to choose how we treat them. This principle might be true, and is more likely to be what Kant means. Kant’s claims about consent give us an inspiring ideal of how, as rational beings, we ought to be related to each other. We might be able to treat everyone only in ways to which, if they knew the facts, they could rationally consent. And this might be how everyone ought always to act.
Whether we could achieve Kant’s ideal depends on which are the acts to which people could rationally consent. If we ought to accept either some desire-based theory about reasons, or Rational Egoism, the Consent Principle would fail, since there would be countless permissible or morally required acts to which some people could not rationally consent. But if we ought to accept some wide value-based theory, as I believe, the Consent Principle may succeed. As some examples suggest, there may always be at least one possible act to which, if they knew the facts, everyone could rationally consent. And we can argue that, in all such cases, it would be wrong to act in any way to which anyone could not rationally consent.
And finally, a bit from Chapter 12: "When there is only one set of principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws, these are the only principles, we can argue, that no one could reasonably reject. If that is true, this combined theory could also include Scanlon’s Formula. According to this
Triple Theory: An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable.
If we accept this theory, we should admit that acts can have other properties that make them wrong. The Triple Theory should claim to describe a single complex higher-level property under which all other wrong-making properties can be subsumed, or gathered. If this theory succeeds, it would explain what these other properties have in common."
Readers from philosophy will already know about this book, which has been circulating for years. But many legal theorists who are interested in moral philosophy may not have encountered Climbing the Mountain. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons was one of the most influential works of moral philosophy of the last century. Climbing the Mountain has generated incredible buzz and is surely a must read for anyone who is interested in the foundations of normative legal theory.
Download it while its hot, hot, hot!