God and consequences : the path to Locke -- Legislators, architects, and spectators : the path to David Hume -- The great divide : Bentham and Paley -- Moral expression as legislation : J.S. Mill and Sidgwick -- Secular heterodoxyn : twentieth century rule-utilitarianism -- Four contemporary options for resolving the paradox -- A hybrid defense of the legislative perspective.
Summary:
"I choose to begin the historical survey in the 17th century. While one can perhaps find earlier versions of the legislative perspective, the goal of the historical survey is not to provide a complete genealogy of the idea but rather to map a transition from one way of thinking to another. This chapter describes the use of the legislative perspective in a school of thought interested in natural law and natural rights with an empiricist aspect. They argued for the existence of transcultural, transhistorical moral principles but also believed that in order to identify those principles one needed to know something about the likely consequences of people trying to act on a rule"-- Provided by publisher.
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