Does Consequentialism Make Too Many Demands, or None at All?

Consequentialism has, since its inception, faced persistent challenges of excess: it is, critics charge, too demanding, too confining, and too alienating to offer a plausible alternative moral theory. Defenders typically concede that consequentialist moral theory is indeed extremely demanding, confining, and alienating, but they deploy a range of defenses against such charges. Some look for partners in guilt, arguing, for example, that typical alternatives are no less extreme in relevant respects. Others, while conceding that the theory is extreme, argue that it is less extreme than might be thought; indeed, that it is not implausibly extreme. Still others bite the bullet, allowing that the theory is counterintuitively extreme along some or all of these dimensions but maintaining that we are nonetheless driven to embrace these counterintuitive results by theoretical reflection.