Lecture Series in Practical Agency: Prof Benjamin Kiesewetter

How to Be a Nonconsequentialist and Still Save the Greater Number

Many agree that, other things being equal, an agent who can save either fewer or more people has a duty to save the greater number. While consequentialists can readily vindicate this prima facie plausible claim, it is far from obvious that it admits of a deontological rationale, and it has also famously been rejected by a number of deontologists. After criticising existing deontological attempts to defend the duty to save the greater number, I offer a new proposal that appeals to a general principle governing the aggregation of normative reasons. I defend this principle against objections and show how it can be combined with an attractive account of moral rights as preventers of aggregation, yielding non-aggregationist verdicts in cases where these seem pre-theoretically plausible.

Benjamin Kiesewetter is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Bielefeld University and Principal Investigator of the ERC project “The Structure of Normativity.” His research focuses on foundational questions in moral philosophy, metaethics, and the theory of reasons and rationality, and also engages issues in normative and applied ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology. He studied philosophy, early modern and modern German literature, and cultural studies at Humboldt University of Berlin (MA, 2007), where he also received his PhD in philosophy (2014). His dissertation, The Normativity of Rationality, formed the basis for his book of the same title, published in 2017 by Oxford University Press and awarded the Wolfgang Stegmüller Prize in 2018. Before joining the Department of Philosophy at Bielefeld University in 2023, Kiesewetter held postdoctoral positions and fellowships at the Australian National University, Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Hamburg, TU Dresden, and the Free University of Berlin. In 2024, he received the German Prize for Philosophy.

17:00-19:00

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Ante Room SW1.17, Somerset House East Wing

Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

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