Nagel’s article will serve us as an example of a sort of criticism of utilitarianism (and consequentialism more generally) that has been made in recent decades. Some of these criticisms will overlap with Kant’s concern about exceptions made for “philanthropic” reasons and the concerns about utilitarianism’s compatibility with considerations of justice that Mill responds to in his ch. V, but even these have a somewhat different character in Nagel’s presentation. In the recent criticisms of it, consequentialism tends to be seen as too demanding—and thus perhaps overrunning other moral considerations—rather than as not demanding enough.

One key idea is the distinction between “agent-neutral” values and the two sorts of “agent-relative” values for which Nagel uses the labels “autonomous” and “deontological.” These are introduced in §1 and developed further in §§2-3. Note especially the examples of a desire “to become a first-rate pianist” (or “to learn the Beethoven sonatas by heart”) on the one hand and the example of twisting a child’s arm to help severely injured friends on the other.

A second idea is what Nagel sees as puzzling about deontological reasons (see §4) and the way he attempts to account for the force of such reasons in §5. Note especially a couple of related ideas. One is the distinction between doing (or intentionally permitting) something and merely causing or failing to prevent something, even a result is foreseen (p. 130). Another is an asymmetry between good and evil sketched on p. 132.

Nagel’s final section discusses the idea of ethical progress in a way that might be compared with Mill’s discussions of that idea. In thinking about the relation between the two, note especially Nagel’s discussion of badness and what he calls the “subjective-objective” struggle on pp. 137-138.