The Limits of Kindness, by Caspar Hare.

Abstract

This is a masterful work of philosophy. The arguments are rigorous as well as ingenious. Assumptions are flagged — literally, with the word ‘flag’ in small caps. The writing is clear, crisp, concise, and accessible. There are many helpful illustrations. Even the cover, which shows a photographic morphing of the author’s image into that of his wife via morphed images of his two children, is great. But, most importantly, the book makes original and important contributions to three key problems in moral philosophy: the non-identity problem, the problem of aggregation, and the problem of determining our obligations to needy, distant strangers. Hare takes an atypical approach to these problems. Unlike most contemporary moral philosophers, he eschews the method of reflective equilibrium. Instead, he thinks that we can derive substantial moral conclusions from some very minimal assumptions about moral decency, practical rationality, and the nature of our essences. These assumptions are meant to be non-negotiable truths that everyone can and should accept. To get a sense of the sorts of assumptions that Hare starts with, consider the three main ones. First, your being morally decent involves your preferring — at least when absolutely everything else is equal — that other people are better off rather than worse off. Second, being practically rational, your actions will be guided by your preferences, which will be coherent, meaning that they will, at least, be transitive with respect to maximal states of affairs (fully specific ways for everything to be). Third, personal essence is not perfectly fragile: all people could have been ever so slightly different along any natural dimension, including height, time of birth, genetic make-up, etc.