Moral dimensions

"In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agent's reasons for performing an action. There seems to be an important moral difference, for example, between tactical bombing and a campaign by terrorists - even if the same number of noncombatants are killed - and this difference may seem to lie in the agents' respective aims. Scanlon argues, however, that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agent's reasons in such cases is merely a failure to…