The Dual Force of Welfare by Jonas Harney

The Dual Force of Welfare by Jonas Harney

This book explores the moral significance of welfare by dissecting a dichotomy central to moral theory and welfare ethics: the distinction between personal and impersonal views. It systematically examines this distinction, revealing its ambiguities and implications for moral judgements in general and issues of population ethics and interpersonal welfare trade-offs in particular.

This book argues for the Dual Personal View of Welfare, asserting that welfare has moral value both in absolute terms and through comparative considerations for individuals. Structured in three parts, it first disambiguates the personal-impersonal distinction, then evaluates its various aspects, and finally develops a dual theory of outcome comparisons. The author’s innovative approach addresses challenges such as the intransitivity of "better than" and the complexities of population ethics, offering a set-relative strategy that re-establishes transitivity within fixed sets of outcomes. By providing the first systematic analysis of personal and impersonal views, this book promises to reshape discussions on the moral value of welfare and its implications for future generations.

Accessible yet rigorous, The Dual Force of Welfare is essential for moral philosophers and ethicists, but will also be of great interest to scholars in related fields such as decision theory, political theory, and social economics.

“The list of acute observations about the different roles welfare plays in ethics is impressive, and the philosophical writing exemplary in style, analytic thoroughness, and substanceThis book is a prodigious piece of philosophy which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who works on the moral importance of welfare.

Krister Bykvist, Professor in Practical Philosophy, Stockholm University

Jonas Harney is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His research focuses on moral and decision theory, particularly welfare ethics, aggregation, population ethics, essentially comparative views, and dynamic decisions. His published work has appeared in Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, The Journal of Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, and Utilitas.