Glad the alienation objection is getting some airtime in EA. I wanted to add two very brief notes in defense of consequentialism:
1) The alienation objection seems generalizable beyond consequentialism to any moral theory which (as you put it) inhibits you from participating in a normative ideal. I am not too familiar with other moral traditions, but it is possible for me to see how following certain deontological or contractualist theories too far also results in a kind of alienation. (Virtue ethics may be the safest here!)
2) The normative ideals that deal with interpersonal relationships are, as you mentioned, not the only normative ideals on offer. And while the ones that deal with interpersonal relationships may deserve a special weight, it’s still not clear how to weigh them relative to other normative ideals. Some of these other normative ideals may actually be bolstered by updating more in favor of following some kind of consequentialism. For example, consider the below quote from Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality by Peter Railton, which deeply resonated with me when I first read it:
Individuals who will not or cannot allow questions to arise about what they are doing from a broader perspective are in an important way cut off from their society and the larger world. They may not be troubled by this in any very direct way, but even so they may fail to experience that powerful sense of purpose and meaning that comes from seeing oneself as part of something larger and more enduring than oneself or one’s intimate circle. The search for such a sense of purpose and meaning seems to me ubiquitous — surely much of the impulse to religion, to ethnic or regional identification (most strikingly, in the ‘rediscovery’ of such identities), or to institutional loyalty stems from this desire to see ourselves as part of a more general, lasting and worthwhile scheme of things. This presumably is part of what is meant by saying that secularization has led to a sense of meaninglessness, or that the decline of traditional communities and societies has meant an increase in anomie.
Glad the alienation objection is getting some airtime in EA. I wanted to add two very brief notes in defense of consequentialism:
1) The alienation objection seems generalizable beyond consequentialism to any moral theory which (as you put it) inhibits you from participating in a normative ideal. I am not too familiar with other moral traditions, but it is possible for me to see how following certain deontological or contractualist theories too far also results in a kind of alienation. (Virtue ethics may be the safest here!)
2) The normative ideals that deal with interpersonal relationships are, as you mentioned, not the only normative ideals on offer. And while the ones that deal with interpersonal relationships may deserve a special weight, it’s still not clear how to weigh them relative to other normative ideals. Some of these other normative ideals may actually be bolstered by updating more in favor of following some kind of consequentialism. For example, consider the below quote from Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality by Peter Railton, which deeply resonated with me when I first read it: