In this excellent book, David Phillips argues for ‘classical deontology’ as both an interpretation of Ross and a distinctive and plausible view. Classical deontology holds that there are prima facie duties to promote the good, ‘special’ prima facie duties that intensify our reason to promote some good, and various goods (virtue, knowledge, pleasure, just distribution, and, in Foundations, artistic and scientific achievement). Promising is an example of an intensifier: when I promise to give you a book that you will enjoy, I have one reason to give it to you – that you will enjoy the book – that is intensified by my having promised to do so. Classical deontology lacks constraints and avoids giving significance to (for example) whether one has done something or merely allowed it. It agrees with consequentialism that ‘reasons always derive from goods’ (p. 2). It differs from consequentialism by adding agent-relative intensifiers of the reason to promote some good, such that my duty proper may be to produce less good rather than more.

Chapter 2 concerns the nature of prima facie duty, including a fine discussion of Ross's varying suggestions for understanding prima facie duty and duty proper. Chapter 3 concerns the list of prima facie duties, with emphasis on Ross's departures from consequentialism. It also (favourably) compares classical deontology with Audi's Kantian version of Ross and situates classical deontology in the debate over particularism between Dancy and McNaughton and Rawling. Chapter 4 concerns goods, with discussion of virtue and knowledge and persuasive criticism of Ross's downgrading of pleasure. Chapter 5 concerns Ross's epistemological and metaphysical views.

Phillips departs from Ross in various ways, almost all of which are improvements. For example, first, Phillips takes his prima facie duties to state ‘flavourless’ reasons. He argues, convincingly, that Ross takes prima facie duties to state moral reasons. This is what makes it (somewhat) plausible for Ross to reject a prima facie duty to promote one's own pleasure. Phillips argues that Ross should be recast with the flavourless ‘reason’ so that issues such as the conflict between egoism and consequentialism can be addressed. (One worry is that Ross does address egoism by arguing that egoism fails to give the correct reason for why, say, a promise ought to be kept. He could make this argument even if he admitted non-moral reasons. However, Phillips is surely right that the key question is ‘what do I have most reason to do?’)

Second, Phillips adds a special prima facie duty to Ross's list of fidelity, gratitude, and recompense. I have reason to promote the innocent pleasure of some deserving person. When that person is me, Phillips thinks my reason is intensified (Ross thinks it is diluted to nothing). Just as my relation to you as promisor intensifies my reason to promote your good, so my relation to myself intensifies my reason to promote my good.

Third, Phillips rejects Ross's ranking of goods. Ross thinks that no amount of pleasure can outweigh any amount of virtue. Phillips replies that we do not think a world with slightly more virtue and great pain is better than a world with slightly less virtue and great pleasure. He also attacks Ross's arguments for his ranking. For example, Ross argues that since I feel no duty to promote my pleasure but do feel a duty to promote my virtue, this ‘points to an infinite superiority of virtue over pleasure’ (p. 122). Phillips replies that these claims about duty are explained by thinking of ‘duty’ as ‘moral duty’, not by the values of virtue and pleasure.

Fourth, Phillips rejects Ross's claim that we are certain about prima facie duties. Prima facie duties state grounds of rightness. Phillips argues that ‘to be certain [that “an act, qua fulfilling a promise . . . is prima facie right”] we would need to be certain that no alternative to Ross's view . . . was correct. We would have to be certain that no consequentialist account of the moral importance of promises was correct’ (p. 186). Phillips also rejects Ross's (usual) claim that we are more certain about prima facie duties than about duties proper, at least in cases of weighing trivial against important considerations and in which needed empirical information is given (as in philosophers’ hypothetical cases).

Here are some reservations.

(1) Phillips's main (and neat) interpretive innovation is the claim that the special prima facie duties intensify prior reasons. Ross certainly thinks I have more reason to give you the book if I promised to do so. He also thinks (though oddly this is not noted) that I have no reason to keep the promise if doing so produced no good. Phillips thinks promises ‘don't provide self-standing reasons, but instead . . . intensify prior reasons’ (p. 67). But one might instead read Ross as thinking that promising provides a self-standing reason, on a par with promotion of the good, with promotion of some good as a presupposition or condition. This fits Ross's presentation of the special prima facie duties as on a par with the duties to promote the good, as well as his treatment of promising as involving such conditions and as, it seems, a complete ground of rightness. Ross is still ‘consequentialism plus’, but the connection is less close (p. 8).

In favour of reading promises as not ‘independent, stand-alone reasons’, Phillips notes, with Ross, that the weight of a promissory obligation is affected by the importance of the benefit and the seriousness of the circumstances in which it is made (p. 70). I do not see how this rules out the stand-alone reason view. The latter view need not say that the weight of the reason never varies.

(2) Ross and consequentialists almost always agree that I have more reason to give you a book that you will enjoy, when I have promised to do so, than when I have not. They disagree over the explanation. The consequentialist explanation is that more good is produced. Ross, in a series of famous examples, argues that this explanation fails. If not returning the promised book produced 1001 units of good (because I do something else), and returning the book produced 1000, we think, Ross holds, that I should keep my promise.

Phillips does not discuss these examples. This is odd. The examples are controversial – many do not agree with Ross, once it is made clear that taking everything into account, keeping the promise produces less good. Many are sympathetic to Ewing's thought that it cannot be right to bring about less good rather than more.

Phillips does, briefly, consider what consequentialists might say about promising as an intensifier. He notes that consequentialists give cases in which there seem to be no intensification, and gives Ross's reply that some unexpressed condition on the promise is violated. He argues that cases in which we are unsure about whether a promise ought to be kept do not show that promising is not a reasons-intensifier in ordinary cases. But this does not address the main issue, which is whether Ross's examples against the consequentialist explanation are convincing.

(3) In my experience, the main source of dissatisfaction with Ross is that he is so unhelpful about how to weigh prima facie duties against one another. Sidgwick criticised common sense morality for providing little guidance in hard cases. Ross does nothing positive to address this – noting that ‘the decision rests with perception’ is of little use to someone unsure of what to do (The Right and the Good, 1930, p. 42). Whereas Sidgwick seemed to pursue ethics to work out what he ought to do, Ross shows little interest in doing so. Ross's most famous chapter is ‘What Makes Right Acts Right?’ not ‘What Acts are Right?’

Phillips does not say much to address this dissatisfaction. Ross says a bit more: he argues that consequentialists who admit more than one good have the same problem of weighing, and that even consequentialists who are hedonists often cannot weigh pleasures.

Phillips does agree with Parfit (against Ross) that in hard cases, there is no ‘precise truth’ about which prima facie duty wins (p. 191). Perhaps, then, he could argue that in easy cases, there is a precise truth, and we can know it. In hard cases, whichever prima facie duty we choose, we make no mistake. But this seems less plausible than Ross's view, according to which the truth stays ‘precise’ but (as in other disciplines) becomes harder to grasp. It also requires Parfit's argument to be convincing. Parfit claims that of ‘two pains, one short but much more intense, one much longer but less intense . . . “[o]ne of these pains could not be . . . 2.36 times worse than the other”’ (p. 192). I do not see why not, especially on preference hedonist accounts of pleasure.

(4) Phillips takes prima facie duties to be either reasons to promote some good or intensifiers of those reasons. This leaves one prima facie duty, non-maleficence, puzzling. It looks like a different sort of reason – a (non-absolute) constraint on promoting the good. It also seems to invoke a doing/allowing distinction. Ross supports it by writing that we ‘should not in general consider it justifiable to kill one person in order to keep another alive’ (Right, p. 22). Phillips is doubtful about constraints, following Kagan, and does not want to add a different sort of reason. To understand non-maleficence, he suggests that it is really a reason to promote the good. It

Later he writes that a ‘neutral attitude to a base bad would also be unfitting’ (p. 114).

I have two worries.

(a) Non-beneficence seems to involve an unfitting attitude. It involves a neutral or negative attitude towards a good.

(b) Ross specifies that beneficence is ‘a duty to do certain things, and not to do them from certain motives’ (Right, p. 23). Non-maleficence is ‘the duty not to harm others, this being a duty whether or not we have an inclination that if followed would lead to our harming them’ (Right, p. 22). In general, the prima facie duties state reasons for certain actions, regardless of one's motivation. If so, non-maleficence condemns my killing one to save another regardless of what attitude I have. I might kill without a positive attitude towards the death of my victim – I might be thinking only of the good of the one I save – but non-maleficence condemns me.

Phillips takes seriously Ross's charge that consequentialism ignores ‘the highly personal character of duty’ (p. 85). His intensifiers all derive from special relations. But if one thinks there are some ‘special’ duties – such as constraints – that do not derive from special relations, this may be a weakness, one Ross tries to rectify with non-maleficence. And if, like Phillips, one adds a special egoistic reason, it may be especially important to add constraints. Otherwise it might turn out right to harm a stranger for one's own benefit: beneficence might be defeated by the special egoistic reason, and other prima facie duties may not help. (I would have a reason to recompense, and a reason to improve my virtue and distribute justly, but it is left open whether these defeat the special egoistic reason, and they do not seem to give the right reasons for not harming.)

I rarely wish that a philosophy book were longer. But Rossian Ethics is an exceptionally clear, easy read that presents an underappreciated view; I wish that Phillips had addressed some of the standard worries about Ross (such as (2) and (3) above).