Abstract: Against Rawls's ‘separateness of persons’ objection to consequentialism, it can be replied that consequentialism does take into account differing personal viewpoints in legitimating trade-offs between persons’ interests. Nozick's Kantian-inspired view of rights as side-constraints is also indecisive, as this view can only proscribe trade-offs between individuals’ interests that have already been deemed, on independent grounds, to be impermissible. The appearance of agent-relativity, which underlies both Nozick's case for constraints, and Nagel's argument for partiality, can to some degree be rendered consistent with consequentialism's commitment to agent-neutrality. More precisely, what might appear to be agent-relativity may be just agent-neutrality, but agent-neutrality as applied to agents’ action's reasons, rather than to their outcome reasons. Williams's argument from integrity, despite its elusiveness, may offer more promising materials for challenging consequentialism.

Keywords: action reasons, agent-neutrality, agent-relativity, integrity, outcome reasons, separateness of persons, side-constraints,