Demandingness of morality

The demandingness of morality is the cost to the agent of complying with moral demands. According to some authors, there is a limit to how much morality can demand from us, and any moral theory or principle that exceeds this limit can for that reason be rejected.

Further reading

Barry, Christian & Holly Lawford-Smith (2019) On satisfying duties to assist, in Hilary Greaves & Theron Pummer (eds.) Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 150–165.

Carlsmith, Joseph (2021) Care and demandingness, Effective Altruism Forum, March 8.

Kaufman, Jeff (2013) Altruism isn’t about sacrifice, Jeff Kaufman’s Blog, September 4.

Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de & Peter Singer (2013) How much more demanding is utilitarianism than common sense morality?, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, vol. 67, pp. 427–438.

Long, Robert (2018) Demanding gambles, Experience Machines, June 10.
Notes that the requirement to work on high-risk, high-reward causes places an additional and different type of demand on the agent from what discussions about demandingness usually focus on.

MacAskill, William, Andreas Mogensen & Toby Ord (2018) Giving isn’t demanding, in Paul Woodruff (ed.) The Ethics of Giving: Philosophers’ Perspectives on Philanthropy, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 178–203.

MacAskill, William & Darius Meissner (2020) The demandingness objection, Utilitarianism.

Mogensen, Andreas (2021) Moral demands and the far future, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 103, pp. 567–585.

Ord, Toby (2012) Global poverty and the demands of morality, in John Perry (ed.) God, the Good, and Utilitarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 177–191.

Sachs, Ben (2019) Demanding the demanding, in Hilary Greaves & Theron Pummer (eds.) Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 137–149.

Singer, Peter (2015) The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically, New Haven: Yale University Press, ch. 9.

Sobel, David (2007) The impotence of the demandingness objection, Philosophers’ Imprint, vol. 7, pp. 1–17.

Timmerman, Travis (2019) Effective altruism’s underspecification problem, in Hilary Greaves & Theron Pummer (eds.) Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 166–183.

Wise, Julia (2013) Cheerfully, Giving Gladly, June 8.

Related entries

altruistic motivation | excited vs. obligatory altruism | effective altruism lifestyle | supererogation | utilitarianism