Progressive Consequentialism

The consequentialist moral stance known as progressive consequentialism is distinguished by its core guiding intuition—what Mark Vorobej calls the progressive constraint—that you are morally required to leave the world in better shape than you found it. Popular culture is replete with references to this intriguing but profoundly ambiguous injunction. Philosophers, however, have had surprisingly little to say about either the meaning, the merits, or the practical implications of this neglected moral claim.

This book fills this glaring gap in the literature. Progressive Consequentialism is, first and foremost, a work in moral theory with an aim to carefully disambiguate the progressive constraint and to rigorously explore the semantic content and the normative implications of some of its most promising variants.

Part I develops a version of Progressive Character Consequentialism according to which each person is morally required to engage in a lifelong transformational project of improving upon her own personal historical track record as a producer of good and bad consequences. Through an analysis of Ingmar Bergman's timeless classic, The Seventh Seal, Part II argues that, contrary to popular opinion, success in leaving the world in better shape than you found it is actually a rare and significant moral achievement. Part III discusses how Progressive Consequentialists can plausibly respond to the problem of global poverty by endorsing an ethic of charitable giving that does not require the production of optimally good outcomes.