Consequentialism and deontological prohibitions

Abstract It is widely held that deontological moral theories are agent-relative because they include prohibitions on actions such as killing, or breaking promises, which cannot be understood as giving the same goal to different agents. They are thus thought to be inconsistent with consequentialism, in its traditional, agent-neutral form. However, the standard argument for this claim is incomplete, a problem which has led some to make the surprising claim that consequentialism and deontology can be reconciled. I defend the orthodox view, by developing a novel way of establishing agent-relativity, which involves showing that a moral theory admits of interpersonal dilemmas: possible situations where, whatever everyone does, someone must have acted wrongly.